In reply to a post by Brunel:

VISTA SHORTCUT OVERLAY MANAGER.

You do not have to invade the registry.

lol - and what do you think the vista shortcut overlay manager is doing?

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

Because I want to. That's good enough for me, even if it's not good enough for you.

Not when you subsequently come on here and complain about Windows doing strange things etc etc with many posters trying to figure out what is going on, hence consuming our time, and then, perhaps resort to blaming Microsoft and saying how rubbish and instable Wndows is all when it was because you forgot or failed to mention you installed this funny program which is messing around with the Windows Shell, arguably one of the most sensitive components in Windows regards application compatibility and general percieved stability. All this for some completely trivial change.

Of course when I say you, I don't mean you personally, but that is what happens 99% of the time.

Insert "personally" between to & invade.

Linky

Hang on. I think you're being a little harsh.

In the OP he expressed doubts about installing this program. That's the reason for the thread. When you asked what he wants to do, he replied "I'd like to be able to remove the shortcut arrows from desktop icons".

Now if that can be done by a straightforward and safe registry edit, (I'm afraid I can't follow the quotation BatBoy gave as I don't see a link to the source containing the picture), what's the problem? Many registry tweaks are published, and no doubt thousands per day applied with no downside.

Does it matter if it's a shortcut or direct access to the program? If you want to start the program, you want to start the program. Like many things on a computer, the end user just wants it to do what they want it to do.