Shortcut Arrow - Change, Remove, or Restore

Well, partial success ... I ran "Rebuild_Icon_Cache.bat" which worked fine, all the icons were restored ... until ... I restarted my PC and all except for the few actual .docx and true folders went back to black squares. ie this seems to be a problem associated solely with programs, not files or folders that I've placed on my desktop.

I guess I'll live with it for now and run "Rebuild_Icon_Cache.bat" at start-up, it's not that much of a hassle as it only takes a minute or two.

The option sfc \scannow also seemed to report that some files were indeed corrupted and it states where the CBS log can be found, unfortunately that log has a "Access Denied" tag on it even after trying to open it under administrators rights.

Thanks for your help.

Hi Brink, - ( did I read somewhere your name is "Sean"?)

Well mixed results again this time. Firstly I had another go at reading the CBS.log file by going back into its properties and allowing myself ("Greg" - as opposed to "administrator", which I am) to read write etc to the file. It worked I was able to open it, it's huge, 6.045KB! And means absolutely nothing to me - lol - no surprise there, I'm a Control Engineer not a Software Engineer.

So I then tried your Option Three in the SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker and that also worked but the file it created was empty!

Although all options worked, I'm no nearer figuring out what's wrong.

I'm next going to try your step 4 in OPTION TWO, later, and I'll get back to you when that's done but it will be a while.

Thanks again for your continued help in this matter
Greg

thanks!! worked like a charm

I have always done the steps to manually remove the shortcut icons but never bothered on this last installation of Win7. Finally, tonight after needing to keep several shortcuts on my desktop i decided to get rid of the ugly arrows.

I tried Option 4 (no arrow version) and it did not work. Win7 64bit. I wonder why? If it is just a registry script, the same as manual, it should have worked. I both logged off and rebooted but the arrows were still there.

Option 1 worked fine. I usually prefer not to run .exe files when avoidable but of course I trust you and your forum. I'm just curious if anyone else had problems with Option 4.

Brink said:

Hello gvstn,

Yep, Option 4 does the exact same thing as in Option 3, but automatically with the .reg file.

I'm not sure why the .reg file doesn't work for you, but doing it manually did.

Hi,

Just wanted to clarify that this time I did not do it manually but tried the easy fix of the registry script in Option 4 which didn't work. Instead of then doing it manually in regedit using Option 3, I did a System Restore and tried Option 1 which I had never tried before. This worked perfectly.

I'm just wondering if the registry script in Option 4 is really exactly the same as doing it manually in Option 3. I know I have used Option 3 before and it worked. I can't tell whether Option 3 would now work without actually going back and doing a System Restore and then doing Option 3 which I would only do if you needed confirmation. I only wanted to let you know that Option 4 didn't work for me this time.

Thanks again for being a reliable and trusted source for not only setting things back to default options but helping customize our systems. :)

I’m having the same issue as the user above.

I manually changed my short arrows to invisible via regedit about 2 years ago. Occasionally they would show up as black boxes, but just recently it happens every time I start up. I have no idea what’s triggering it. When I run the rebuild icon cache bat it works until I restart. I’ve checked the reg and the icon shell never changes its always set to (-50) invisible. Are they any other known reg entries that point to the shortcut arrow icon? There must be another one somewhere.

If there is no known solution, can some help me write a start up script to run rebuild icon cache that also refreshes the desktop? When I run the bat file my desktop and task bar are empty. I have to log off and log back on for that fix to work. So I’d like to combine both tasks into one if possible.