My Shortcut Icons are Actually Program Icons

I want to clean up my desktop by deleting some shortcut icons. Each o
the icons contains the directional arrow in the lower left corner
However, when I "right click, delete" on any Shortcut Icon, I a
prompted: *Are you sure you want to move this file to the Recycle Bin?
*I actually deleted several programs before realizing what I wa
doing. The wording I was accustomed to in WinXP: *Are you sur
you want to remove this shortcut ...* isn't offered to me. I'm runnin
Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP

 

When you say "The wording I was accustomed to in WinXP..." I assume
that you think that XP and Vista are different in this regard.

They are *not* different. For both of them, when you try to delete a
shortcut, the message you get says "Are you sure you want to remove
this shortcut." When you try to delete a file that's *not* a shortcut,
the message you get says "Are you sure you want to move this file to
the Recycle Bin?"

When you get the second message, clearly the file you are trying to
delete is *not* a shortcut, and that's true in both XP and Vista.

If you are saying that there were files on the desktop that were not
shortcuts, but had the curved arrow in the lower left-hand corner,
that's not possible, and you were mistaken.

 

I'm not saving programs to my desktop - only shortcuts. However, when
I attempt to delete the "shortcut" it deletes the program itself.

 

I understand that they are not different. As an example, I have an
Adobe Reader 9 shortcut on my desktop now. When I right click, I am
prompted to "Delete File" and "Are You Sure You Want to Move This File
to the Recycle Bin". Is there some way to attach screen shots to show
this?

 

It's not quite that simple.
I have desktop shortcuts ( type .lnk ) to Windows Explorer, to Windows
Mail and to a program group which produce the message 'Are you sure you
want to move this file to the recycle bin ?' when I right click and
select 'delete'. All other shortcuts produce the message about moving a
shortcut to the recycle bin and the assurance that the program is not
being uninstalled.
I can't remember what method I used to create the first type of shortcut
but their properties show a simple shortcut with 'Type of file: Shortcut
(.lnk)'.

Tom

 

On my machine running Vista Ultimate, when I right click a desktop shortcut
and click Delete, I get the message "Are you sure you want to move this file
to the Recycle Bin?" and then it shows me the name of the shortcut and the
location of the file to which the shortcut points. If I click "Yes", it
moves the shortcut to the Recycle Bin. The file to which the shortcut
points remains where it is. The word "file" in the message refers to the
shortcut itself which is actually a small, 800+ byte, file. Deleting a
shortcut which points to a program will not delete the program.

Tyro

 

Same here on Vista Home Premium, for both files and shortcuts.

If I choose a folder, it says "Folder". If I choose the Recycle Bin, it
tells me how to reinstall it if I delete it. I didn't remove it