> I do it by explicetly calling conhost
> see here
> https://www.ztw3.com/forum/forum_entry.php?id=124175

That's what I'm doing (which I learned from seeing your post originally--thanks!). As noted in my original post, my shortcut has the following line as the target:

"C:\Windows\System32\conhost.exe C:\ZTreeWin\ZTW64.EXE"

FYI, I only typed "conhost C:\ZTreeWin\ZTW64.EXE" into the shortcut. The next time I opened it ([right click] > ZTreeWin > [right click] > Properties), the shortcut had expanded to include the full path to conhost.

However, all my futzing around may have solved the issue, as today, the shortcut shows the ZtreeWin icon, even though it still invokes conhost with ZTreeWin as the parameter.