Enable Transparent Icons registry tweak

I am reposting this under Desktop Customization as I feel the sub-forum entitled Tweaks, Guides, and HOWTO's under the support section does not get enough traffic and easily overlooked. I feel this is an important improvement for your desktop

I'm going to provide a whole series of registry tweaks that work on Windows 7 from my stash. Now I don't know whether any of these features will be implemented in the RTM version, but I suggest everyone who's interested create a folder on you hard drive and name it Windows 7 Registry Tweaks. and place all files in this folder.

I'm naming them clearly so you;ll understand what the tweak does.

They were not all created by me and I will give credit if I know who created it.

Windows 7 registry scripts don't seem to work sometimes. That's why I always recommend you save the file in Notepad and save the encoding format as ANSI. That should eliminate the error message the error message, "Windows Registry Editor cannot import binary files"

I will try to provide an undo file with each script that I post however, a few will not remove the entry completely although it will not harm the computer in any way. I will also try to provide side effects that can happen when applying the tweaks.
Since most people are using Aero, there is no to change some options relating to Windows Text,colors, fonts, scrollbar width, etc

The most important one is the use of transparent icons. If you notice on your screen where an icon is on a dark or white background it is very difficult to read what the icon is.

This first registry hack eliminates that problem.

It can be fully tested by right-clicking on the desktop, choose personalize > Desktop background > Windows Desktop Backgrounds, choose select all shuffle every 10 seconds. You'll now notice a dark shadow if the icon is located on a white area of the background, making it very easy to read.

Copy and paste the following into Notepad, choose Save As... Make sure to select All Files and ANSI encoding and name it transparenticons.reg. You need to manually add the .reg to the end of the files.Name the undo file transparenticonsundo.reg.

Please NOTE: This forum wraps some lines. It should read CurrentVersion,, not Curre ntVersion.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"ListviewShadow"=dword:00000001

and here is the undo file although I don't know why anyone would want it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]

"ListviewShadow"=dword:00000000

This was my own discovery. In later posts I'll be showing how to change the Windows Text color (I prefer blue) as well as other items related to any windowed program..Even if you switch to Windows Basic or Classic and modify these entries, they do not carry over when you re-enable the Windows 7 themes. So the registry is the only place these options can be modified.

A word about these so-called "tweaking" programs that are popping up for Windows 7. I tried 2 of these and they are dangerous to say the least and they are designed more for restrictions than customization. One runs as a service (like we need another service running) and sucks resources. There is also a Disable All feature which can lock you completely out of Windows if you don't know what you are doing.

These restrictions are already included in Windows 7 Group Policy. One had an option to add IE to the desktop....didn't work. Another ridiculous tweak was to set my Computer to Explore rather than open. This caused my graphic program to popup and view all graphics because it took away the Open entry completely.. These programs seem to be shoddily put together to be the first ones out there.. there were no tooltips or any explanation as to what the tweaks actually did.

If you ever think of using one, create a new account and use it on that account only

Finally, in my first posting I forgot to mention the fact that our most supreme moderator Radenight had tested this for me before posting.

Thank you Radenight.

If you have any questions or requests, please let me know.

Awesome tweak reg. Wasn't using bright wallpapers, but now I can. Thanks. :P

Thank you,

I glad at least one person saw it and posted back,.

Everyone should be using this tweak, but it'll just end up on the 2nd page and no one will even notice.

Originally Posted by reghakr

Thank you,

I glad at least one person saw it and posted back,.

More than one person saw it, reghakr. At least one more saw it and saved it in case I ever reinstall Windows 7. I would likely be willing to buy a copy of Windows 7 Pro for the $100 temporary special, but that would certainly be my limit. But I am not willing to risk even that price until I see some "plain English" literature clearing the confusion as to what will upgrade to what, from what, etc.

Originally Posted by reghakr

Thank you,

I glad at least one person saw it and posted back,.

Everyone should be using this tweak, but it'll just end up on the 2nd page and no one will even notice.

Yeah its in the nature of forums for great things to get ignored for bad reasons, but I'll try and bump it once in a while.

Thanks guys,

Appreciate it!

I wanted to try this out so I went into the registry and I found that it is already there. Is it not there for other builds or something? I have Build 7100. I find that a little strange.

I am currently using a dark desktop background and if it wasn't there I couldn't read things written in the glass border at all. Or maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing.

So you're saying the ListviewShadow entry was already there?

Did you test it out by changing the backgrounds as stated in my original post?

Originally Posted by reghakr

So you're saying the ListviewShadow entry was already there?

Did you test it out by changing the backgrounds as stated in my original post?

There is no shadow around the icon but there is one around the icon labels. When I set up my Performance Options I only disabled the "fade or slide menus and tooltips into view" visual effects. The rest of the options I left enabled. One of those options was "Use drop shadows for Icon Labels on the desktop". Maybe when the registry entry isn't there it's because someone disables all the visual effects for better performance.

I have tested it out and found it to be true,

Guess it wasn't that good of a registry tweak as I thought

Well, anyway I looked over every item in the list and my other tweaks that I posted under Windows Desktop Customization seem to be only applicable when you edit the registry.

Good Call!