James E. O'Brien

Awhile back I discovered that I could no longer pin programs to my task bar. I am always experimenting with new settings, so I assumed this issue was something I caused, but i couldn’t figure out what I did. Yesterday, I discovered that I was right. The reason I could no longer pin programs to the task bar was because I changed the way shortcuts appeared on my desktop by removing the stupid little arrow from the icon. That is something I have never had a problem doing in Windows XP, so why would this be a problem in Windows 7?

Anyway, I found the solution to recovering my ability to pin programs to the task bar, and it requires a little modification to the registry.

Back up the Registry Settings

You must be logged in an Administrator to perform these steps

First and foremost, back up your registry before you try this. Better to be safe than sorry, I like to say.  Two easy ways to back up the registry. One, you can simply create a system restore point:

1. Open System by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, right-clicking Computer, and then clicking Properties.

2. In the left pane, click System protection. Administrator permission required If you’re prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

3. Click the System Protection tab, and then click Create.

4. In the System Protection dialog box, type a description, and then click Create.

The second option is to open the registry Editor and export a copy of your Windows 7 registry

1.  Click the Windows Orb on the task bar, in the Search box, type “regedit” (without quotes)

2. In the Registry Editor, click File, and click Export.

3) ave the exported file somewhere save, like the root of the C: drive. This will make it convenient to restore in case something goes wrong.

Edit the Registry

1. In the Registy Editor, navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile (don’t confuse the small “L” for a capital “I”)

You should see the following files:

(Default)

EditFlags

FriendlyTypeName

NeverShowExt

2. Add a new string value to the registry key,

Value name: IsShortcut

Value data: .lnk

(You might see IsShortcut is already present. If so, you should also see IsNotShortcut. If so, change the value of IsNotShortCut to “0“)

3. Exit from Registry Editor.

4. Logout and login again or restart Explorer for the change to take effect.

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