I just reviewed this entire thread (all 27 messages) because I was looking for a 
way to get rid of those annoying shortcut arrows.

I agree with some of the posters that it's just a cosmetic thing, but . . . geeezzzz 
. . . it's annoying anyway!!!!!

Like a lot of the folks on here, I had/have TweakUI and also had done (just before 
I Googled to this forum) one of those "Critical Windows Updates", and the update 
(actually, I did 5 of them) messed up my desktop icons with the reappearing shortcut 
arrows.

And, like a lot of folks here, my use of TweakUI failed to remove those arrows - 
even though the TweakUI setting showed that they should have been removed.

At first, I tried rebooting and resetting the TweakUI settings, but none of that 
seemed to work.  So I ended up Googling here looking for a solution.

Reading this thread, I saw that others have gone through the EXACT same thing.

OK . . . the solution - which is not really any revelation here because it's a confirmation 
of what some have already suggested right here (Thanks, BTW).

First, I opened regedit and searched for all the instances of "IsShortcut".  I found 
about 8 of them (including the two most frequently mentioned here) and renamed (NOT 
deleted, but RENAMED as suggested by several posters here) them to "IsShortcutOld". 
 Then I found the ShellIconCache file and renamed that also ("ShellIconCacheOld") 
and DID A COLD REBOOT(ie. I turned the machine completely off and then back on again). 
 IT WORKED!!!!

THANKS AGAIN!!!!

BJ

P.S.  Whether any of this would have worked with deleting instead of renaming, soft 
reboot or F5 Refresh instead of hard reboot, or skipping the ShellIconCache step, 
I don't know.  I went right for the "kill" as recommended here.

P.P.S.  After applying the "Critical Updates", I also had a message on opening my 
IE after hard booting "IE is not your default browser, do you wish . . . [blah, blah, 
blah]".  That was kind of strange since I have never had any other browser on my 
system, and have never gotten that message before.  Years ago when I tried Netscape(on 
another machine I had), I got that message, but not since then.  I clicked on "Yes" 
and am assuming I won't see that again.

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