Tip: My Top Five Useful Desktop Shortcuts

I'm sure there are lots of things that you do everyday on your computer that you wish you could execute with the click of a button. No way, you say. You can't do that. Wait! What about all those icons on your desktop. Their shortcuts! Maybe we can use it to execute that command that you wished would juts magically happen. In this tips edition, we will be looking at my top 5 shortcuts that make your computing life, a whole lot easier! Read More...

First before we do anything, we need to learn how to create shortcuts. Right click on an open space on your desktop and hover over new. Then click Shortcut (Should be the second one from the top). This will bring up a window. The first thing you should see is the Type a location box. This is where you will type your commands. After clicking next, you should see a name this shortcut box. This is where you will type a name for the shortcut. Once created, you can even customize the icon that represents your shortcut by right clicking on it and clicking properties. Under the Shortcut tab, click the Change Icon button. You should now see a window that lets you select an icon.

Now for my top five:

5. Open the Remove Devices Dialog - For those of you who use flash drives or other external devices, you probably use this a lot. You can even use Nircmd (See #x) to Remove a certain device. Type the following into the type a location box:
   
   rundll32.exe shell32.dll, Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll
   a
4. Restart Windows Explorer - Windows Explorer is the program that displays your start bar, task bar, and all your programs. Sometimes it stops responding or is really slow and you wish you could restart it. This shortcut will. Type the following into the type a location box:
   
   rundll32.exe shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx -1
   a
3. Eject CD Drive - Isn't it a pain to push that annoying little button to open your CD drive. Not to mention, sometimes it refuses to open! Using a little program called NirCmd, and the code below, you can eject the Drive with the click of a mouse.
   
   "C:\Program Files\Nircmd\nircmd.exe" cdrom open [Drive Letter]:
   
   For example if your CD drive is D you would use:
   
   "C:\Program Files\Nircmd\nircmd.exe" cdrom open D:
   a
2. Empty the Recycle Bin - Wouldn't it be nice if you could clean up your recycle bin with one click.
   For Windows XP:
   
   CMD.exe DEL C:\RECYCLER\*.* /F /S /Q
   
   For Windows Vista:
   
   CMD.exe DEL C:\$Recycle.Bin\*.* /F /S /Q
   a
1. Shutdown, Restart, Logoff, and Hibernate Your Computer - Some of the most commonly used functions on your computer can be simplified into shortcuts.
   Shutdown:
   
   SHUTDOWN -s -t 0
   
   Restart:
   
   SHUTDOWN -r -t 0
   
   Logoff:
   
   SHUTDOWN -l -t 0
   
   Hibernate:
   
   SHUTDOWN -h -t 0a

So there you have it. Seem too complicated, you can download all my shortcuts from this article from my downloads site. You can even add shortcut keys for your shortcuts by going to the shortcut's properties (Right Click on Shortcut>Properties) and chose your key in the Shortcut key box.