Shortcut Arrow Icon - Change, Remove, or Restore in Windows 10  

Brink said:

It'll be interesting to see if your registry settings match up with OPTION TWO though.

Neither option has ever worked for me. Only this has worked:

In regedit, go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile. In the right column, change lsShortcut to XlsShortcut

I haven't run into any issues yet............

Brink said:

Deleting or renaming lsShortcut causes an issue, but I can't remember what yet.

I'm pretty sure that the IsShortcut method breaks pinning to taskbar.
EDIT: Tested and confirmed.

I don't pin anything to the task bar so no problem here. At least that method actually works to remove the shortcut arrows which is all I want......

Oh and if I ever do want to pin something I can just change the reg, pin it, and change the reg back..........

Edwin said:

I understand.
I don't encourage using those kinds of 'inexplicable' utilities very often either.
I just happen to still have the standalone utility, before it was bundled in the 'Winaero Tweaker' suite
It does, however, do the exact same thing the tutorial does, it just provides and places the elements for you.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

I will delete my post.

I used to have this one to. But for some reason I lost it. And it is no longer supported.
Is it possible for you to post a link to download it again?
it worked fine in W10 for me. Also with the September update.
And I would love to have it again.

It seems after weeks of trial and error I’ve finally found a solution to this desktop icon problem that works for me. I tried all the varying string 29 value remedies and ended up with all the associated errors. Black squares over the icons, white squares over the icons and even no icons at all. Sure they looked like a solution after one restart but the error was soon back again after that. The one method I hadn’t tried was the blank icon fix and it looks like a winner.
So thanks to all the posters here for a solution that appears to be working.

These are the steps I used. Hopefully it will help others.

Before starting download the blank icon from post #105 (page 11). Call it BlankIcon, for ease of identification, and place it in a folder of your choosing. C:\Windows\system32 is where I put mine. Sort of sounds like where it should go although I don’t think it matters.

1. Press windows key + r to open Registry Editor and type in regedit then choose OK
2. When prompted Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your PC?, choose Yes
3. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
4. Right click on Explorer and using the dialog menu choose New > Key and name it Shell Icons. Press Enter.
5. Click on Shell Icons and in the right pane right click on an empty area, and click on New > String Value. Name it 29.
6. Double click on the 29 String Value to modify it. You should see a blank box called Value data.
7. In the Value data box enter C:\Windows\system32\BlankIcon.ico or the path where you saved your Blank Icon.
8. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager. Scroll all the way down to Windows Explorer. Click once and press restart or reboot the computer or log off and on to complete the task.

I’m guessing this will need to be done every time there’s a Windows 10 major update.

Thanks for the welcome. The tip is still working. Fingers crossed. :)