Month: November 2010

Remember the pretty useful “Show Desktop” icon that used to be present on the quick launch toolbar in Windows XP?

It was the life saviour for many users like me when I quickly wanted to open my desktop with too many windows being kept open. Fast forward to 2010. Most of us are now using Windows 7, the most successful Windows OS after Windows XP. Microsoft, desperate to decrease the amount of space occupied by icons like these, has removed this button from the original position altogether. Instead, Windows 7 came with a small rectangular blank button on the far right of the taskbar next to the clock. When you hover the mouse on this button will hide all the open windows quickly to shows up the desktop. If you have enabled Aero effects, you will see ghosted outlines of the windows, a part of the Windows 7’s “Aero Peck”.

You can also get to the desktop anytime using Windows Key + D shortcut, besides choosing “Show the desktop” from the context menu that appears when you right-click on the taskbar. Despite all these options, you might still have a liking for that old XP style “Show desktop” icon on the quick launch toolbar. Even though it’s a bit difficult to add such a shortcut or icon to the quick launch bar in Windows 7, you can still add this “Show Desktop” shortcut to your Start Menu to for a quicker access. Here is what you need to do:

1. Open notepad (or any text editor for that matter) and type the following code:

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

2. Click File> Save As and choose “All Files (*.*)” from “save as type” and give “Show Desktop.scf” as the file name.

3. Drag the file to the Start Menu and release it to have it pinned to the Start Menu as shown:

That’s it! The “Show Desktop” shortcut comes to your Start Menu.

Note:

1. This guide also works for Windows XP and Windows Vista based computers. You might want to implement this guide to restore “Show Desktop” icon in case it goes missing from your quick launch bar.

Do you frequently move files to a particular folder or location on your computer? Wish you could have an easy way to quickly transfer a file to that location? Yes, Windows does have a solution for you, in the form of “Send to” menu list found in the right-click context menu of any folder.

This tutorial explains about how you can add or delete items from the “Send to” menu list in Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Steps:

1. Navigate to the following folder in Windows:

Windows XP users:

C:\Documents and Settings\(User-name)\SendTo

Windows Vista & Windows 7 users:

C:\Users\(User-name)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

Where “User-name” stands for the Windows username with which you are logged in.

2. You will find all the shortcuts that are included in the “Send to” list in this folder. Add whatever shortcut t(program or folder) hat you would like to have it in the “Send to” in the right-click context menu or delete the item which you don’t want to see in the “Send to” menu option.

3. For instance, I have added a nee shortcut for “Techrena’ folder inside the “Send to” list as shown:

and it’ll appear in the “Send to” list in the right-click context menu as shown:

Isn’t that simple? Now go and play around with the Send to items in your Windows (XP/ Vista/ Windows 7).

Windows 7 has a small folder icon pinned to the taskbar (or you can add it manually*)  which indicates the shortcut for the “Windows Explorer”. Clicking on it will open the “Libraries” folder by default as shown.

But in most of the cases, you might want this to open a default folder other than the “Libraries” folder. Use the following trick to customize any Windows Explorer shortcut to open it with a custom folder of your choice in Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

* This tutorial assumes that you have a pinned shortcut for the Windows Explorer on your taskbar. To pin the Windows explorer the shortcut to the taskbar, just drag and drop the “Computer” entry found in the Start menu. This guide works well for all types of shortcuts for the Windows Explorer. You can also add a desktop shortcut for the windows explorer on your desktop. To do this, search “explorer” in the Start menu and drag the “Windows Explorer” result to the desktop.

Steps:

1. Right-click on the folder icon at the taskbar:

4. Now go back to the “Properties” window that is kept open in the step 2, choose “Shortcut” tab and focus on the “Target” field. By default, it would have the following path:

%windir%\explorer.exe

5. Select the “Target” filed and paste the address that you copied from the step 3. For “My Documents”, it would be this string

%windir%\explorer.exe Libraries\Documents”::{031E4825-7B94-4DC3-B131-E946B44C8DD5}\Documents.library-ms”

6. Click on “OK” to apply and save the settings.

Target strings for other destinations:

Computer: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /E,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

Set the above string under Target filed to open “Computer” by default in Windows Explorer.

From now on, when you double click on this Windows Explorer shortcut, it will open the custom folder that you set.

Related: Pin Computer Icon To Windows 7 Taskbar