SOME shortcut overlay arrows missing on SOME machines

Hi there,
I am hoping someone can help with a rather puzzling problem:
On one of my machines, the shortcut overlay arrows are missing for Internet Shortcuts and for shortcuts to batch files on a network drive. Shortcut overlay arrows appear properly on shortcut icons for Excel Spreadsheets on a network drive.

I have attempted the following on the problem machine:
- Rebuilt icon cache
- Ran Restore_default_Shortcut_arrow.reg from Brink's 22 page magnum opus thread
- Verified that all keys cleared in the above .reg file where in fact not present or blank in the registry
- Yes, of course I rebooted.

Now the big puzzler: On another machine the arrows appear properly.

Those are the SAME shortcuts: I copied them from the problem machine to a network drive and then from the network drive to the machine that is working properly. Somewhere along the way, the overlay arrows were resurrected.

Both machines are running Windows 10 Pro 64 V2009 (20H2) - Bld19042.844 - i.e. the latest production version of Windows with all the latest updates.

Any thoughts?

Have you installed a tweaking tool & it has removed the arrow?

See if anything here helps.

Shortcut Arrow Icon - Change, Remove, or Restore in Windows 10
How To - How to Change the Shortcut Arrow Icon in Windows 10 | AnandTech Forums: Technology, Hardware, Software, and Deals
How to Change the Arrow Shortcut Icon on Windows 10 - Make Tech Easier

1. Yes, I do have WinAero Tweaker installed (as per your second link) but it has not removed anything.
2. Your first link points to Brink's tutorial and, as per my original post, I did run Restore_default_Shortcut_arrow.reg provided at that location.
3. Your third link does not apply: I want to RESTORE the arrows to their default. I do NOT want to CHANGE them.
To get the the default overlay to show, the string value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons\29
needs to be removed. I verified that this value does not exist on my machine.

One bit of additional information: In my original post I said "Somewhere along the way, the overlay arrows were resurrected." I just tried it again and when I copied the shortcut to my network drive, Windows Explorer immediately shows it correctly i.e. with the shortcut overlay. Bottom line: The shortcut arrow DOES show in Explorer but does NOT show on the desktop.

Here is another bit of information: I am running Stardock Fences. While it is highly unlikely that "Fences" selectively modifies the overlay on SOME shortcuts, it is, theoretically, possible. (Usually it's an "all or nothing" setting: Either show ALL shortcut arrows or show NONE of them. I have never seen a setting anywhere that says "Show SOME shortcut icons but don't show SOME other icons - just to annoy TheAncient".

I create shortcuts all the time, right click on the file/exe & select > Send to.
Then I usually click on Desktop ( create shortcut )

Does it behave for you?

I just tried it again:
1. Copy Internet shortcut from Desktop (NO shortcut Arrow) to network drive (Explorer shows icon WITH shortcut arrow)
2. Rename shortcut
3. Copy the renamed shortcut (which DOES have a shortcut arrow) from network drive back to the desktop using the Send to method you are using.
Result: the new shortcut appears on the desktop WITHOUT the shortcut arrow.
(By the way: When I go through the same operation on another machine, the shortcut properly shows on the desktop of that machine WITH the shortcut icon)

I run this when I have an elusive problem.

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As a rule, I stay away from repair utilities: You never know what those things are doing in the background while you aren't looking.
I use Microfluff tools such as SFC /scannow and DISM /scanhealth (or restorehealth) but in this case, both of these tools claim, there are no problems.
I would greatly prefer to find a solution that actually lets ME (rather than some mystery utility) fix the problem.
If such a solution cannot be found, I may have to try a utility but that would be a last resort and it would require that I take a full image copy prior to installing it. An image copy will allow me to restore to a point before I allowed the mystery utility onto my machine.

@jmatt I finally found the time to image my system and try the repair utility you linked. The first link you gave was for the 2021 version of Windows repair - that's the utility I downloaded, installed, and ran. The next three links you gave just show pictures of a PREVIOUS (2018) version of the same utility and the last link is basically a download link similar to the first one but also allows you to purchase the utility. The heart of this utility appears to be the checkdisk and the sfc /scannow command, both of which I had already run. Next, I used the "Repair" facility. To be honest, I did not have the time to analyze exactly what that thing does but it appears to be some sort of registry cleaner. I had already run CCleaner and Eusing free registry cleaner, thus I did not expect the Repair utility to find any major problems. Next, the utility ran through a number of other repairs such as file permissions, permissions for services, stopping and re-starting all services, AV settings etc. My biggest concern here is, that the utility simply overwrites whatever is there, with default values. No prompts no nothing. So far, I only determined that it mucked up my start menu and my file associations and it did nothing to address my original shortcut problem. I can't tell if it did any damage beyond that, but if anyone wants my opinion: stay away from this "magic silver bullet". I am just glad I took an image copy before I started this process and I will be restoring that image shortly.