Desktop shortcut icon arrow disappeared

It did it again. Could something connected via USB possibly be making the desktop refresh, making it do this?

I have the identical issue now on Win 10. Anyone ever find a fix that works?

rebop said:

I have the identical issue now on Win 10. Anyone ever find a fix that works?

Me too! It's now April 2020!

CountMike said:

Winaero still works.

You previously said it worked to remove or resize the overlay. All I'm trying to do is restore the default Windows 10 behavior of having a stable, non-changing, arrow overlay. I think the problem of disappearing and changing desktop icon overlays happened to me with the last Windows Update on April 14th.

Hello,

I apologize, I realize this is an old thread. But, I am running into this exact same issue. Same shortcut overlays and behavior. Unfortunately, Winaero Tweaker doesn't fix this behavior (the incorrect overlays return after a period of time). A Win 10 in-place upgrade also didn't repair this. I've been tearing my hair out for quite sometime trying to chase down a fix, short of blowing up my Windows install and starting from scratch.

This appears to be the only site I've come across with this exact issue. Is there a chance anyone out there has figured out a fix?

Thank you!

I realize that this is an old thread but as noted by others it is most relevant to the problem I've run into as well.
I was attempting to create 'comment' displays when I hover over any of my desktop shortcuts. Normally there is information about file location etc. I discovered that there was a way to display the [comment] field in the shortcut Properties/Shortcut Tab when hovering. My problem was that the function quit at seemingly random times.

As a retired programmer and Instructional Systems Developer for programmers I couldn't let this continue without some attempt to discover the cause. It's become painfully obvious that Google does not have all the answers to all the problems. I have found some consistent methods to repeat the problem that I'll list below so that one of the Windows Mensa's that may bother reading this can use for a clue.

1. After booting in, everything works fine, there are arrows on the icons, and hovering over them brings up the comments that I've entered.
2. If I open a browser window (Firefox in my case) the arrows are still there, but the comment feature disappears.
3. If I focus/click on the desktop and to an Explorer Restart or an F5 Refresh the feature returns.
4. If I focus back on the browser it again disappears so changing focus from one to the other is an indicator.
5. Until reading this thread I hadn't noticed if other images were coming up in place of the arrow, but in my case the arrow did disappear on occasion. I'll be looking for a connection on that aspect.

If any readers of this post have other repeatable processes, you might post them to add to the collection. I may be the only person in the world subscribed to this thread, but I hope someone else can help.

Brink said:

Since this has just recently happened, you could also do a system restore using a restore point --

-- I just did that the other day to fix the tiniest problem and got one of my first Blue Screens of Death. I had to reinstall the entire system from USB. I'm no longer a proponent of this 'solution' unless a desperate last resort.

And there was no underlying problem with my system either. I had had to do a complete reinstall some months ago (5?) and so the system was no 'weary' from bugs and such over time. I'm the SFC/DISM King and the system was smooth as silk.

So to be clear (in this scenario) I'm blaming the RESTORE POINT for the BSD.