Shortcut arrow icons gone after Windows 8.1

Anonymous
2014-04-26T20:52:31+00:00

Hey all,

I know it's something minor but ever since I have upgraded to Windows 8.1 I noticed that the little shortcut arrow icons that appear on shortcuts are gone. They appear again only if I hover my mouse over the shortcuts or if I refresh the desktop or folder where the shortcuts are in. However, after a reboot the issue comes up again and I have to redo the mentioned actions.

Things I have tried:

  1. I did a SFC/ scannow and it didn't find any integrity violations.
  2. I have tried 3 different nvidia WHQL drivers without any result.
  3. A reformat also didn't fix the issue.

My specs:

Windows 8.1 Pro 64x with Media Centre (Update 1 installed along with all latest updates)

i5 3570K CPU

nVidia GTX 660Ti with 335.23 WHQL driver (not OC'ed)

8 GB RAM and 1 TB HDD

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Accessibility

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-09-10T01:03:37+00:00

    123456

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-09-09T23:49:25+00:00

    I'm just noticing this problem (hopefully not a "feature") on a new computer with Windows 10. Those arrows are key to making sure you don't delete the source directory! The problem went away after simply rebooting.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-11-22T14:03:31+00:00

    Its been almost 2 months since this issue has been fixed for me,on both my computers! :D

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-11-05T09:43:40+00:00

    Someone found this bug here: 

    http://dabayrus.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/howto-restore-missing-tortoise-icon-overlays/

    The root cause of my problem is Sharepoint Workspace component. It's put's 5 overlay icons... 

    I remove them, and after restart, i got back all my overlay icons... 

    Thank you guys!

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  5. Anonymous
    2014-11-05T03:36:33+00:00

    After I upgraded to Win 8.1 64-bit Pro, I too lost the shortcut arrows, as well as the arrow overlays for junctions and symlink.

    I finally traced it down to OneDrive/SkyDrive. OneDrive added three overlays to Windows Explorer. Unfortunately, Explorer can only handle a maximum of 15 overlays (if I understand correctly).

    Not being a OneDrive user, I went into Group Policy Editor to check if it was enabled. (It wasn't, because I had purposely detached my Microsoft cloud login from my local machine login. But if it had been, I would have disabled it here.)

    Then I went into Regedit and found the overlays here:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

    There were three OneDrive overlays listed, and coincidentally, I was three over the limit of 15.

    I exported the registry keys for the OneDrive overlays as a backup, and then deleted them out of the registry.

    After a reboot, all of my shortcut, junction, and symlink arrows came back, and so far, they have been visible everywhere I've expected them to be.

    Just wanted to let you guys know that this shortcut bug/glitch spontaneously got fixed at my end. They all appear now no matter how fast I go to the Desktop after a boot.

    I have no idea what fixed it. Maybe after updating my nVidia drivers (to 344.48 WHQL) or something else from Windows Update.

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