Shortcut Arrow - Change, Remove, or Restore

I've tried every method listed in your post. I've checked and double checked. I've tried other programs. I've tried manually editing the registry. I've tried creating my own blank icon from scratch with an icon editor...all to no avail. When I relog all I get is a big ugly black icon covering my icons.

Any thoughts on what is wrong?

Thanks for your prompt response, Shawn.

I can get back to the ugly shortcut arrow w/ no trouble. The programs work in that regard as does simply removing the "29" entry via in the reg editor.

It was just no matter what I tried, I got the ugly black box you see in the screenshoot. I also thought it suspicious that when I unblocked the Blank.ico, it when from transparent on my desktop to the same ugly black box. That was why I tried creating my own empty icon.

I thought about maybe replacing the shortcut icon in the shell32.dll file, but then you run into all kinds of hassles because it's a system file that Window has perpetually locked.

However, while perusing shell32.dll I noticed there are a couple of blank entries in it already. So, being the adventurous type, I tweaked the registry entry so the value looks like this:

C:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll,50

Viola! no more ugly shortcut icons. That's basically what the manual process here says, but I could not get it to work w/ an external .ico file.

Ther you go luc - found your own solution.

Just thought I should mention a potential issue.

First occurrence was about a year ago and I thought I could just ignore it since I found a "work around". Happened again this past week when I built three new computers... on every computer.

All three used Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, varying rigs in parts, used two sets of discs, and all went straight through windows updates before anything else. The 64bit registry file did not work. This happened on every attempt. Last year I discovered 32bit file works for both 32bit and 64bit OS installs.

It's a simple concept; extract to desktop, move one file to C:\Windows, right click and merge registry file, reboot. I do not think I made a mistake. 32bit works, I'll live. Just suggesting perhaps SP1 or a recent update changed things a little bit. Maybe the 64bit file needs to be checked.

Wonderful guide and amazing links. This site rocks. I'll keep lurking like I have. 3 year record broken by a simple stupid shortcut arrow icon

Regards,
Jason Xiao

Once again, Thanks Brink!