I know there is something out there that lets me get rid of those white shortcut arrows that are on the desktop, it's been talked about in here, but In my old age my memory is failing help please?

Tweak UI should do it - look under the Explorer Tab.
Magic Tweak probably does the same thing from the System Icon function.

Remove shortcut arrow from desktop icons
Here's how you can remove those shortcut arrows from your desktop icons in Windows XP.
Start regedit.
Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTlnkfile
Delete the IsShortcut registry value.
You may need to restart Windows XP.

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don't know if it works, never tried it though.

And many programs can do that, Tweak-XP; System Mechanic etc........ ;)