This article describes how to remove or modify the overlay (arrow icon) shown for Shortcuts in Windows Vista.

Remove or modify the Shortcut overlay

Method 1

Download Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover (FxVisor) from frameworkx. FxVisor allows you to either way to modify or remove the shortcut overlay arrow in Windows 7 and Vista. Here is the screenshot of that utility:

Method 2

Removing the shortcut arrow: Download blank_icon.zip and extract the file blank.ico to a folder of your choice. In this example, we use C:\Icons\blank.ico as the path to the icon file you downloaded. And then follow these steps:

1. Click Start, type regedit.exe and press ENTER
2. Navigate to the following branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ explorer \ Shell Icons

3. In the right pane, create a new String value (REG_SZ) named 29
4. Double-click 29 and set its Value data as C:\Icons\blank.ico
5. Close Regedit.exe and restart Windows

Note: If the Shell Icons branch does not exist already, you'll need to create it.

Setting Light arrow overlay: If you wish to use a light arrow for Shortcuts, you may do so by downloading lightarrow.zip (includes lightarrow.ico). Copy lightarrow.ico to your Icons folder, and set the Value data for 29 accordingly (see Step 4 above). If you've copied lightarrow.ico to your C:\Icons folder, the Value data would be C:\Icons\lightarrow.ico

Screenshot

(Fig) Shortcut overlay - Light arrow