William Beaver asked for “a simple, safe” way to remove the arrows from the shortcuts on his desktop. Shortcuts point to files–usually but not always programs–that are stored elsewhere on your drive.

In the January 2008 issue (page 80), I told how to eliminate those annoying little arrows in Windows XP’s shortcut icons by running Microsoft’s free Tweak UI tool. At that time there were no free ...

Windows Vista adds some big-ass arrows to its desktop shortcut icons. Luckily, the How-To Geek site has instructions on how to remove them. This tweak involves editing the Windows registry, not ...

If you have noticed an icon with 2 small blue overlays, then know that it has been placed there by the Windows OS to indicate that the file or folder has been compressed to save disk space. If you are ...

Shortcuts are a convenient solution for quick access to folders you use frequently, but if you've gone overboard or installed a lot of new programs recently, your desktop can quickly become cluttered.