I’ve been using Windows Vista Ultimate since it was released and ever since installing there had been one small ‘glitch’ that’d been annoying me constantly. Any folder I opened in an Explorer window had a small green arrow coming out of the folder icon for it on its taskbar button. You can see what I mean in the following screenshot.

I purchased a subscription to Microsoft’s TechNet earlier in the year and so decided to make use of it and asked why this was happening in their Managed Newsgroups. Just over 12 hours later I got a solution from a user called “dean-dean”.

“What you’re seeing is normal, depending on whether or not you have the Navigation Pane open or not. If you are using the Pane, you’ll see the green-arrow icon. If you close the Pane (under Organize >Layout), and open a folder, you will see the normal folder icon (without the arrow). In other words, the default command for “no navigation pane” folders is Open, and the default command for “show navigation pane” folders is Explore, (which then uses the green arrow icon in the taskbar, just to let you know you’re Exploring, I guess). Try it both ways…”

Basically what he’s referring to is the “Folders” pane that is in the left bar underneath “Favourite Links”. This pane is collapsed by default but can be expanded by clicking on the “Folders” heading for it at the bottom of the bar. The Folders pane shows a treeview of all the folders just like in Windows XP. Having this pane open changes the icon to the one with the arrow. Closing it reverts the icon back to the normal folder icon. Strange behaviour I know but some people probably find this useful.

So thank you dean-dean, you saved me from almost reformatting just to get rid of that stupid icon.