Remove Shortcut Arrows In Windows XP

BEFORE EDITING THE REGISTRY ALWAYS TAKE A BACK-UP INCASE SOMETHING GOES WRONG! To take a Registry backup, open Registry Editor Go to File>Export and Export the whole registry, it takes around 200-250MB Space, for good measure, try to take a back up on a external device like, Portable HDD, Thumb Drive or CD/DVD.
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By Default whenever you place an Shortcut on your desktop, for example Shortcut to Adobe Acrobat, WinXP will place an Annoying Arrow on it's left side, if lots of Icons are on desktops Your Desktop can look pretty ugly
http://www.gcflearnfree.org/Graphics/xp_desktop.gif

There's a Way you can remove all the shortcut arrows! here's how:

Go To Start>Run> And Type : regedit it will open the Registry Editor, Use CTRL+F To Find the Following Keys and Delete the 'IsShortcut' value from them.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\piffile
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\InternetShortcut

It's easier than it sounds! After Doing so, Restart Windows and Voila! No Ugly Arrows!

NOTE: For some people, Deleting These three keys doesn't work, in that case also delete 'IsShortcut' from the following Keys:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DocShortCut
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WSHFile

After doing so, Restart.

great help mate.. thanks

nice to know this info

its a very nice tweak :)

good post mate.. thanks

great share bro
cheers!

needed this, thanks.

An Alternative Way (and a LOT Simpler one) Just Download TweakUI (147kB), Install it and Run it, go to Explorer>Shortcut and select 'None' done! All the Arrows will get removed.

good shortcut method

great guide Raj.
keep it up:)

this was just what I was looking for