Figure 1: A Shortcut File’s Properties
by Ronald Beekelaar
Many of the new interface features of Windows 95 and Office 95 exist because of a new type of file—the shortcut file. These handy little files all have LNK as their extension. The list of recently used documents in the Start menu, in fact the entire Start menu structure, the Send To menu, and the Office Favorites folder all make use of shortcuts. See Figure 1 for an example of the Properties dialog for a shortcut to my CD-ROM drive.
Figure 1: A Shortcut File’s Properties
You can make shortcuts to files easily. Windows 95 offers several different ways to create these files. For example, dragging (use Ctrl + right-click to drag) a file to the desktop from Explorer creates a shortcut file and puts its icon on your desktop. The shortcuts will have names like "Shortcut to xxx" or "Shortcut (2) to xxx", where xxx stands for the original name of the file.
This "Shortcut to" part of the filename (and its icon description) is annoying and even redundant, since the accompanying icon shows a little shortcut arrow in the lower left corner and the shortcut file itself has the LNK extension. Windows 95 can be taught not to add this "Shortcut to" text to new shortcuts; however, this is far from easy. You can’t even set it outright, Windows has to learn it by itself!
Here’s the learning process:
This reminds me of the childhood riddle about a snail that has fallen into a 20 foot deep pit. It tries to get out. Each day it can climb seven feet, but at night while it is asleep (do snails sleep?) it slides back four feet. How many days will it take the snail to get out of the pit? Well, since it will average a distance of three feet a day, the snail will need seven days to climb the 20 feet pit, you will say. Wrong. After five days and nights it has climbed 15 feet. On the sixth day it can easily cover the remaining five feet and gets out.
Did the snail learn anything? No. But this is the way Windows learns about your preference not to include the text "Shortcut to" in front of new shortcut names. The figures are different, each rename will earn you five feet, while each new shortcut created will only set you back one foot, but the idea is the same.
Since the link-value starts at 20, it’s easy to see that if you haven’t created any shortcuts yet, it will take you five new shortcuts plus five subsequent renames to reach zero, the magic number. In that situation, new shortcuts will just be the name of the file you are shortcutting to, i.e., "xxx" or "xxx (2)" without the "Shortcut to" text included in the name. Exactly how you want it. Nice! If you have already created shortcuts since you installed Windows 95, the link-value will be higher than the default of 20. However, the maximum value it will go to is 40.
Add "Shortcut to" Again
How do you change this setting back to including the "Shortcut to" text again, unlearning so to speak?
You would guess that switching "Shortcut to" back on involves some more Windows hand-holding. Something like manually renaming shortcut "xxx" to "Shortcut to xxx". And maybe doing this a couple of times to teach Windows to include the "Shortcut to" text again. Alas, this is not how it works.
The next time you start Windows 95, the "Shortcut to" will automatically be switched on again. It is as if each time the snail has finally escaped from the pit, the next night it is thrown back in! In Windows-speak, link-value is back at 20 again. If you want to get rid of "Shortcut to" you have to teach Windows again and again every time after you have restarted Windows. Talk about a bad student.
Link in the Registry
There is only one usual suspect to be rounded up to find where this setting is being maintained: the Registry. Why don’t we just set this value to 0, instead of this convoluted learning business?
Sure, the value is indeed in the Registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\link=14 00 00 00. Note that the link-value is displayed as a hexadecimal number in the Registry Editor. Initially, link is 14 hexadecimal, which equals 20 decimal. See Figure 1.
Figure1: The Registry Editor
But changing this value in the Registry doesn’t cut it. Setting it to any value without restarting Windows does not work. Windows will continue to use the old value for its "plus one, minus 5" learning. Apparently it maintains a copy of this value in memory while Windows is running. Setting it to zero plus restarting will result in the value of 20 again appearing as if by magic. Plop! Thrown back in the pit. Setting it to any number greater than zero plus restarting helps somewhat. Windows will use this number after restarting. So, Windows will remember any value greater than zero, but will switch to 20 when zero is used.
Cookbook for Removing "Shortcut to"
The best you can do is getting rid of "Shortcut to" for the current Windows session. Unless you manually change the link-value in the Registry to a low number and log on again, it involves several repeated renames to count down to zero in steps of five.
Steps to teach Windows not to use "Shortcut to".
The link-value starts at 20 and can be 40 at most. Depending on how may shortcuts you have created, repeating steps 3 and 4 eight times will always be enough to set the link-value to zero. After restarting again (link-value 20) only four renames will be enough.
Unfortunately, renaming from the DOS command line does not affect the link-value. We can’t create a batch file to do the work, you have to do the steps by hand.
However, instead of using the mouse, you can use the keyboard for steps 3 and 4. This makes it easier to repeat them. Rename is F2, undo is Ctrl+Z. Together steps 3 and 4 take the following four keystrokes: F2, a, Enter, Ctrl+Z. The tedious thing is that you have to repeat these keystrokes eight times. Boy, finally I miss Windows Recorder. What were they thinking? Thirty-two keystrokes to switch off a single feature for the current Windows session only!
This also works in other language versions of Windows 95, providing you use the localized text for "Shortcut to" of course. No, the same learning strategy does not exist for the "Copy of xxx" name for copies of a file. It only applies to "Shortcut to xxx" names.
An Unsupported Windows Utility to the Rescue
Microsoft’s Windows 95 Shell Development Team created a set of unsupported utilities called PowerToys. One of these toys is a little program called TweakUI. You can use it to, huh, tweak the user interface. TweakUI allows you to change the "Shortcut to xxx" setting. It even sticks after restarting! Without Windows teaching? No. Every time you restart Windows, a little routine with the intriguing name TweakMeUp is loaded. It automatically goes through the required steps to teach Windows this setting, each time anew. You can get TweakUI at Microsoft’s Web site but MS has "use at your own risk" warnings posted all over this stuff. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/windows/software/powertoy.htm.
So, why doesn’t Windows 95 provide an easier and more persistent way to change this setting? Since this is all undocumented material, I have no idea. As far as I know, this is the only "adaptive" setting in Windows 95. Are we missing the point? Is this a bug? Who knows. In the meantime, happy climbing.
Ronald is a Dutch computer consultant specializing in Windows 95 and Office 95. He is a frequent contributor to the Dutch edition of Windows Magazine and is the author of the Word add-in Ampersand Inventory. You can reach Ronald at 100332.3542@compuserve.com.
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