How in the Tech

Pretty Up Windows by Removing the Focus Rectangle

By Adam Myers ⋅ April 7, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Command Prompt, Customization

With each iteration of Windows Microsoft continues to polish the edges and work towards a beautiful and elegant working environment. While they’ve made great in-roads with each version, one thing continues to stick out as hideous. Ever since the days of the desktop, even back on Window 3.11, Windows has been plagued with the dotted outline around files or icons when you make a selection – but only occasionally! In actuality, it’s not really random as it’s contingent on how the initial selection of the item came about. If you navigate with your keyboard arrows to select a file for example, and then click away with your mouse, the initial file selection will turn from the highlighted backdrop to an unsightly black dotted outline.

Unsure what I am referring to? Here is an example of my own.

Here is another from the author of the utility I’m about to speak of.

Isn’t that pretty!? Thankfully to address the problem requires only the installation and registration of a single DLL file.

1. Download and extract the single dll file to c:\windows\system32\. You will need admin-rights to copy this file to this directory!
2. From an Administrator Command Prompt register the DLL to the system with regsvr32 RemoveFocusRect.dll. You’ll see a RegSvr32 dialog box with confirmation of the change.



3. Finally, reboot to ensure the registration takes hold.

For more information please browse the original thread on the Neowin forums.

Lastly, if you want to revert the changes it’s as easy as replacing the command from Step 2 with regsvr32 /u RemoveFocusRect.dll.