Untouchable desktop icon!!!!!!!!!

[Zack]

Ok, so when I purchased a compaq laptop with windows xp
home pre-installed I expected plenty of crap to already
be on the hard drive. There was a large variety of "MSN
this" files and "Yahoo that" files along all sorts
of "AOL crap" in various folders. I spent a little bit of
time cleaning out all of my folders to get rid of this
unwanted material. However, despite me best attempts, I
cannot delete this stupid AOL icon. I have done
everything, even deleted the icon picture(its now the
icon that is a page with a window on it instead of the
AOL symbol). I right click on it and the only options
that come up are Open, Explore, and Create Shortcut. I
select it and press delete or shift delete and nothing
happens. I drag and drop it into the recycle bin but it
doesn't move, I try cutting it but nothing works. Sure,
it's not doing anything and since the AOL folder is gone
it leads to nowhere. But I hate having to see the
words "America Online" anywhere on my computer let alone
right on the desktop because I HATE AOL!!!!! Is there
anyone out there who can help me remove this annoying
item?

 

[Graham Hughes]

Zack before you hack up your registry

right click it and unselect the read-only button then delete it

 

[Les Herrman]

Ok, so when I purchased a compaq laptop with windows xp
home pre-installed I expected plenty of crap to already
be on the hard drive. There was a large variety of "MSN
this" files and "Yahoo that" files along all sorts
of "AOL crap" in various folders. I spent a little bit of
time cleaning out all of my folders to get rid of this
unwanted material. However, despite me best attempts, I
cannot delete this stupid AOL icon. I have done
everything, even deleted the icon picture(its now the
icon that is a page with a window on it instead of the
AOL symbol). I right click on it and the only options
that come up are Open, Explore, and Create Shortcut. I
select it and press delete or shift delete and nothing
happens. I drag and drop it into the recycle bin but it
doesn't move, I try cutting it but nothing works. Sure,
it's not doing anything and since the AOL folder is gone
it leads to nowhere. But I hate having to see the
words "America Online" anywhere on my computer let alone
right on the desktop because I HATE AOL!!!!! Is there
anyone out there who can help me remove this annoying
item?

Open Explorer
It will show in the left hand Explorer tree.
Right click it there and there is a selection to delete it.