Get rid of Shortcut Residue Intended For Windows XP Windows 2000 Windows Me Windows 98 Windows 95 Shortcuts have two ways of telling you that they're shortcuts. When a shortcut is first created, its caption begins with Shortcut To. The shortcut's icon also has a small curved arrow in the lower-left corner. Although one can simply rename the icon so that Shortcut To isn't there, but there is no way to remove the little arrow for just one shortcut. To turn these features off for good, follow these instructions: Get rid of Shortcut To: Microsoft says that if you remove the Shortcut To text immediately after creating the shortcut at least eight times, that it will stop coming back. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work. In other words, No solution. (see below) Get rid of the curved arrow: Run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE). Search for the text IsShortcut, and remove any references to it. This means that there may be more than one occurance of the word. Click on the desktop, and press F5 to refresh the desktop so that this change will take effect. (More information.) Get rid of either (or both) of them: Obtain and install TweakUI. In TweakUI, choose the Explorer tab, and use the Shortcut overlay section to choose the overlay icon. Use the somewhat misplaced Prefix "Shortcut to" on new shortcuts option, below, to fix the text. Note: The curved arrow icon can also be changed with Microangelo. Written by: Annoyances.org Last updated: Thursday, August 16, 2001 Care to discuss this article with other Windows users? Select your operating system here, and click Continue to post your question. - Choose your OS -Windows 7Windows VistaWindows Server 2003Windows XPWindows 2000Windows MeWindows 98Windows 95 Previous discussions about this article: (open a message to see applicable responses, if any) [Windows ME] Question about 'Get rid of Shortcut Residue' (Ken: Tuesday, September 4, 2001) [Windows 98] Question about 'Get rid of Shortcut Residue' (ron moser: Thursday, April 4, 2002) [Windows 98] Comment about 'Getting rid of Icon Arrows' (JAM: Saturday, April 27, 2002) [Windows 98] Question about 'Get rid of Shortcut Residue' (Ray: Wednesday, May 15, 2002) [Windows 98] Question about 'Get rid of Shortcut Residue' (drybo: Sunday, June 23, 2002) [Windows XP] Question about 'Get rid of Shortcut Residue' (Robert Wallace: Friday, October 4, 2002) [Windows XP] Question about 'Get rid of Shortcut Residue' (alan: Tuesday, December 3, 2002) [Windows 98] Question about 'Get rid of Shortcut Residue' (Bob: Monday, March 17, 2003) [Windows XP] No program needed... (x: Friday, August 22, 2003) [Windows 98] Question about 'Get rid of Shortcut Residue' (S. Laine: Saturday, January 24, 2004) [Windows XP] Solution for WinXP remove 'Shortcut To' (Tien Chi: Tuesday, February 8, 2005) [Windows XP] Get rid of "Shortcut to" prefix without TweakUI (Denis Howe: Sunday, August 2, 2009) Return to "Reducing Clutter"