I am trying to remove the hover effect that brings up the checkbox next to the row item in SharePoint 2010 list item rows. Is there any settings that can make this happen? I would like to keep away from having to tinker with the CSS and javascripts. Please see illustration below. Thank you.
There are no settings for that sort of thing - the selection check box is a default behavior. You are going to have to modify the CSS, for that.
Use SharePoint Designer (Available Here]1) to help determine whitch CSS elements control that behavior, and make a custom style sheet to override it.