I've tried SeSp2.1a and it insisted on ruining the icons by requiring the little arrow. TweakUI has no effect on it.

I tried WUpG98en and it does the same thing.

Somehow those developers have run into people who really want some outsider to mess with their desktop appearance.

So has anyone put together a Win98SE update package that does not make any changes to MY desktop?

It's one of the earlier Windows 98 security updates that disables the option to change or remove the arrow from the desktop shortcuts, so any update pack will also do the same thing.

Search registry for "IsShortcut" and replace with "IsNotShortcut".This will fix all your shortcut arrows to none. The best fix for this problem. If when you run a program that updates and breaks this, just go back and find where it puts "IsShortcut" back along with your "IsNotShortcut" and delete the extra "IsShortcut".

Yes, dleting the reg key is the way to go.
Even after this update, my desktop icons were unchanged.
Thought I'm surprised this update was in uSP2.1a...

Copy-paste this codd into notepad and save it as "remove-arrow.vbs". Double-click the vbs file.

Caution is advised using the delete IsShortCut method because now you may have a doubled right click Context Menus but only when right clicking some items. It is very unnerving to see double your choices, double your fun. I almost expected the Wrigley twins to dance their way into the room and offer me some Doublemint gum when it happened to me. It wasn't a problem until I actually had to select one of those choices and then I thought - which one do I use? I don't remember my choice. Second major side effect is that you loose all user set Function Key ability just in case anyone has taken advantage of that aspect of Windows. If it's a shortcut and you've assigned it a function key (hot key), it will no longer work. Other broken aspects of shortcuts after the IsShortCut "fix", I really don't know about nor do I want to go there.

As soon as I heard about the fix talked about below in the Windows 98 Update segment I tried it and it works great with no side effects that I know about.

shortcut arrows@regedit.com

The March 7, 2000, shell32.dll update otherwise known as 313829 is persistant in that even after an "over the top" windows reinstall you still have the file but WinUP site wants you to install it again anyway, so DanielFlorida may have applied the update a very long time ago.

One fix was to reduce the size of your icons via right click desktop properties|appearance Tab|Item:Icon Size=xx and make the value <31, but that was before the days of the update and I have never tried it myself.

And you can edit the arrow icon file itself in shell32.dll to be transparent. Zero based number is Icon 29 as shown by Resource Hacker for example. Of course you'll need to do that with an Icon editor of your choice since one does not come with Windows 98.
And there used to be another registry fix that was a duplicate to how TweakUI got them to go away but that method broke just like TweakUI did with the new shell32.dll file. That registry entry is the one shown at the above regedit.com link, but to my knowledge it can't possibly work because the new shell32.dll doesn't read that key any more.

Here is why this happens, and these are all possible solutions:
http://www.mdgx.com/98-5.htm#PSBF

HTH

Shade,

I indeed, always wondred why I had double menus on the right click on links.
Thanks.