I’ve got a PC here running Windows 98SE, and those dorky arrows indicating something is a desktop shortcut have returned to my desktop.
I’ve got TweakUI installed on this machine, and for the longest time, it was arrow-free. Then, something happened and the arrows came back. I checked Tweak, and it was still set for no arrows. Just for laughs, I set it for full arrows, and watched the desktop refresh itself. All the shortcuts had arrows. I tried clicking the Prefix “Shortcut to” option, and saw everything relabel itself as Shortcut to… Blech. I cleared that checkbox, and all the “Shortcut to…” went away. Good. At least that function works properly. Encouraged by this, I clicked the no arrows option, watched the desktop refresh, and come back with all the arrows intact. Gaaa!!
Thinking Tweak might be broken, I uninstalled it, rebooted and installed a freshly-downloaded copy, straight from Microsoft. Fire it up, select no arrows, and no change.
Use Regedit and browse for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows \Current Version\explorer\Shell Icons. Delete the Shell Icons key, then reboot and run Tweakui again. This should fix the problem.
There was a Microsoft critical update (Q313829) released in March that fixes an obscure security vulnerability in shell32.dll. If you ran this update, you probably had your shell32.dll replaced with the newer version that breaks TweakUI.
There are two ways that I know of to fix it. You can hack the registry so that the system no longer sees them as shortcuts, or you can reverse the update and remove the updated file.
To hack the registry and remove the arrows, back up your registry, and open regedit. Navigate to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile key. Rename the IsShortcut values to something like NoShortcut. Then navigate to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\piffile key and do the same thing there. After you reboot, you will have to rebuild your shell icon cache, either manually or by using TweakUI.
If you just want to reverse the update, go to start>run>sfc.exe and use it to reload the old shell32.dll from your Windows CD. Then use regedit to navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer key, and delete the DisableFlushWrites=hex:01,00,00,00 and UseCopyMaxBufferSize=hex:01,00,00,00 values. Then rebuild your icon cache.
Be veeerry careful, and backup your registry first.
Argh… I first tried Q.E.D.'s suggestion. No change. I then tried Joey’s first suggestion, and the only change that produced was adding .lnk to all the shortcuts on the desktop.
Fortunately, I was able to import the excised keys back into the registry and get back to where I was 10 minutes ago.
As for a newer version of shell32, the version I’ve got is from December 2001.
This is just pushing me closer to wanting a new computer. (Honey, I need a new computer because the Registry is screwy!)
Along the lines of Joey G’s suggestion, go into the registry and find the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\piffile. In each, there’s an entry marked “IsShortcut”. Rename these to “IsShortcutOld” then restart the computer. The arrows will go away, and you don’t have to rebuild the cache.
gotpasswords; would you mind if I hijack your thread to ask what seems to be a closely related question?
I have tweakUI installed on my win98 machine at work and auto login just suddenly stopped working , well sometimes it still works (maybe one boot in twenty)… any ideas?
I was just about ready to take advantage of a compelling collection of deals at Dell, when the governor phoned in a reprieve. Well, actually, it was a write-up in a magazine describing a fix for the arrows.
Download and install FreshUI, then fire it up, navigate to Windows Interface - Desktop - Shortcuts - Shorcut Arrows and double-click the Show arrow on shortcuts option and uncheck the three options. Click OK, and reboot.
