On Thu, 3 Sep 2020 12:56:04 +0200, R.Wieser wrote:
Hello all,

When I on two XP computers, over time rather personalized, on the desktop or
folder, rightclick - "new" - "Shortcut" I just get an empty file named
"new shortcut" (no extension), and thats it.

However, on a third one, with a rather basic configuration, a "Create
shortcut" wizzard than pops up, asking for a to-be-linked-to target, and a
new name for the file.

Does anyone have any idea how to

1) Re-activate the "Create shortcut" wizzard follow-up.
(I have absolutily no idea why the wizzard disapeared!)

Broken Shell registry setting?

For `.lnk` file, its registry key should have a `ShellNew` subkey.
In that `ShellNew` subkey, it should have a `Command` string value with
below data:

rundll32.exe appwiz.cpl,NewLinkHere %1

If everything seems already OK, chances are that there's third party
software inteference.

2) remove the "shortcut" link from the rightclick - "new" menu (preferred.
Its rather useless to me anyway, as a rightclick target - drag- create
shortcut is much more convenient)

The `Folder` and `Shortcut` menu items in the `New` popup submenu are hard
coded in SHELL32.DLL. They're added dynamically from code, instead of based
on menu resource. And it doesn't care whether the registry has any entries
for shortcut file and folder/directory types, or not.