can anyone please tell me why my shortcut icon show up like this?

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I am running vista ultimate as far as i know i have not had any changes to cause this error. maybe someone else has seen it.

It's not just that shortcut. it is all shortcuts on my desktop. It does not matter if I create a new shortcut or if I install a program and it creates it.

It is everywhere, although, if the icons are bigger, you can see the original icon behind the jacked up one.

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milnerw, looking at the last image you posted, it strikes me that the ugly generic icon in the lower left corner is right where the shortcut arrow should be.

Could it be that the arrow symbol, wherever it lives, has become corrupted? I would try running the System File Checker (SFC). Instructions here:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....tem-files/

Well I ran the SFC, It said that there were errors that could not be fixed and that i need to restart. I restarted but it did not create the cbs.log file so I could see what could not be fixed.

SFC said the log should be in C:\logs. Does anyone know if it could be saved somewhere else?

Well after reading the How To again, i realized that i scanned the wrong directory. I re-ran the SFC and this time it did not find any errors.
Any other ideas?

jd has made a valid point use that software to remove the shortcut arrow altogethor and even if the file for the arrow cannot be found it still wont show up any way.

that is if you dont need to arrow to be kept on the the shortcuts.

PS. there is obviously a file missing for the arrow icon i would strongly suggest just removing it.

@LukeTurnBull: I think you miss understood what I meant. I was suggesting selecting the "Arrow" option in that program to hopyfully restore the "Arrow" shortcut style like it should be. The way that program works is by replacing the current icon with the one you select so in theory it could replace the currect messed up one with the default "Arrow" style for the original poster.

@Lighthouse: Actully I think it's something like imageres.dll that the current shortcut arrow is stored. I think the one in mmcbase.dll is just a copy that only the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) uses.
The program I linked to above just changes the one in imageres.dll.
Edit: Actully it doesn't, I was wrong. The program changes a registry key. See below for more.

@jd yeah i know what you meant all i was sugeesting was for him was that he could remove it because it just looks untidy thats all i did understand .

Thanks again jd. Now I can take Vista Shortcut Manager off, and set it myself.