There are two types of icons. One has a little arrow in the lower left corner, the other is just plain, no arrow. Those with an arrow are just shortcuts, and if you delete them, only the shortcut is gone. The program is still untouched and would need to be removed in "add/remove programs" area.

The shortcuts without arrows are the actual program so deleting them would remove the program all together, but it's always best to remove any program using "add/remove program" area as doing otherwise can leave pieces of the program behind and mess up other things going forward.

Icons that you've placed on the desktop you certainly can delete. I would not want to delete the system icons like myComputer, myDocuments, Trashcan, etc.

If you have any programs.exe or filename.dll on your desktop, some will create problems/snafu's and drive you into hangs/crashs/etc. They shouldn't be there.

It was just the shortcuts I was wondering about...the ones with little arrows. I don't think they leave a program behind, do they? I don't have any exe or dll's there....and I know not to delete "My Documents" and things like that. It was just the ones that I put there for convenience and no longer use that I was concerned about. I stopped the popup asking if I wanted to delete any unused icons because I was thinking that it might delete one that I wasn't ready to let go of, but hadn't used for quite a while....I "do" have some of those "I might look at that one of these days" things...

Okay...I reread what mes444 said....I do have shortcuts for some programs I have, but I wouldn't want to delete them anyway. But..I have some shortcuts to websites and things like that that I frequent..or think I "might" frequent sometime...those don't leave a trace when you delete them, do they?

You are right, if they are just shortcuts to sites or pictures, etc., things like that, deleting will remove them completely as they don't lead to a program. I was referring to shortcuts to actual programs in my answer.