You didn't state which control style you were using, so I am speculating a bit here, but what you are referring to as selected might be an item whose Checked property is set to true; if this is the case, set the property to false. The Checked property is applicable when the control's ItemSettings.Style property resolves to 'StateButton', which is the default value for the property when the control's Style property is set to ToolBox or VisualStudio2005Toolbox.