shortcut overlay arrows

[Dan]

I just did an MS update.
now the little shortcut overlay arrows are on all of my icons.
I tried getting rid of them with tweakui, and with Microangelo,
but they keep coming back.
can some one help me?
there must be a windows setting somewhere that takes care of this??

[jamesrpm]

I just read this on Dr. Bombay's site.

"Choose Run from the Start menu and type in Regedit. Once it starts, open the Edit menu and select Find. Look for "IsShortcut" (Leave the quotes off), and delete every instance of it. Did I mention you should back up the Registry first in case you do something stupid? Well, too late now. Shut down and restart. Either the problem will have gone away or you will be the proud owner of a $2,000 paperweight. Either way, you'll have eliminated those nasty little arrows."

It was printed in a number of newspapers so I'm assuming it works correctly.

[Dan]

thanks jamesrpm
I tried this and it didn't change anything
are you sure you gave me the whole scoop on this?
what is the url for the page you read this on?
anyone else have any ideas??

[Dan]

whoa! wait a mnute....
I just did another registry search and found a half a dozen more entries...delete 'em and rebooted only to find those nasty arrows solid gone.
would still like the url tho plz
thanks

[Dan]

I found it, here it is:
http://www.windows-help.net/windows98/tune-15.shtml

[jamesrpm]

Here is the link to the DR.Bombay

http://www.bombayinstitute.com/

Look under the archives for 2002/11

[RayH]

I wouldn't mess with the registry. Not only might you remove the short cut arrows, you might disable the shortcut key functions.

What you need to do is install an original Shell32.dll. The update you did changed the Shell32.dll.

[reboot]

Shell32.dll is nothing but a library of icons. Changing it will NOT get rid of the arrows. The registry puts them there to specify a shortcut to a program, and not the program itself.

[Dan]

thank you one and all (and Happy Tday!)
the removal of the registry entries worked fine, and I appreciate all of your feedback.
I still have all my shortcut key functions and all of my shortcuts work just fine......

[GFK]

Here is a link that will explain what caused the arrows to re-appear and a much safer way [not editing the registry] to allow tweak to get rid of them.

http://www.forrestandassociates.co.u...ut_arrows.html

[RayH]

Reboot Twice when doing MS Critical Updates Tweak UI's ability to hide the shortcut overlay arrows have been overridden.

The first time, I did some registry change. It took away the shortcut overlay arrows. But worse, it took away the shortcut key function. Each time I reset the shortcut key function it would again be lost on bootup. Given a choice, I'd rather have the shortcut key and arrows than no arrows and no shortcut keys.

But both times I swapped the offending Shell32.dll with an original Shell32.dll Both times Tweak UI's ability to hide the shortcut arrows were restored.

[Dan]

thanks GFK
this article explains the situation very well, and offers very sensible solutions.
while deleting the registry entries did it for me, with NO loss of shortcut key function, the others solutions here make sense for systems that would be effected.

[RayH]

Dan I'm glad you had no loss of the short cut keys. I think that "Is Shortcut" was the hack I did and it messed my short cut keys.

The last time the Critical Updates messed with my arrows was well over a year ago. Maybe a year and a half. But there were some major updates when I loaded IE 6 SP1.

But I just did a Windows Update check. It did not try to give me another critical update as GFK's link said it would.

[Dan]

Thanks RayH
A strange thing happened today...when I dialed up I went right to the MS Update page and not my homepage. Then the page started "working" ...no real reason for it that I can think...kind of creepy tho'......will M$ ever stop amazing us?????

[reboot]

Interesting stuff Ray. That's a totally new one on me, and I've been dealing with win98 since early 97 (betas).
I've run across the same problem, but never heard of that solution.
Something else must be wrong in Windows, if the updates mess the shortcuts that way.
Any 3rd party screen managers installed, like windows blinds?

[RayH]

Reboot I'm pretty much running a stocker machine, with the exception of a program that allows me to change the Startup and Shutdown screens (WinLogo Changer) and a program that allows me to customize the start button and clock (TClock).

Somewhere along the line, on some board I picked up the Shell32.dll thing. A couple of people seem to think anything with problems regarding icons (including the arrows), it's a corrupted Shell32.dll

As I have recently upgraded to IE 6 from 5.5, I noticed that a lot of the critical updates were ones I previously loaded when I upgraded to 5.5. So I got the same arrow problem.

I'm no expert. But anything I post, I've personally tried on my machines.

[juppy]

If you're running Win95/98/NT, there's a nice little freebie program called Invisible that works nicely. I originally downloaded it to get rid of the background color around the text of an icon (I'm still using Win95). It lets you set that color to transparent or any other color, as well as change your text color and it gets rid of those shortcut arrows for you too. It says it only works with 95/98/NT though. This link takes you to the freeware version of it; there is also Invisible Pro but it's shareware (I think it's like $10 or so). Here's the link for downloading:
http://www.mindbeat.com/downloads/invidown.shtml

[RayH]

It's getting off the point. Invisible Pro is an excellent program that does a lot of things. But a freeware called ActivIcons will do the same thing the the icons and will keep your icons put when the system goes fritzy. But ActivIcons takes a while to boot.

[Dan]

if you think AtivIcons takes a while to boot you should see how long Microangelo adds to boot time!!