Sure thing, this is the age of Windows7 & Windows Vista, but if you’re still happy in your XP world, here’s some help for you. There are loads of applets and other goodies available on Windows XP, which do not have a default shortcut as such. So, you need to run them by making use of the command prompt.
The usual way of accessing these tools is – go to Start Menu > Click Run > Type in the name of the program that you want to run > Hit Enter Button. But, this is not the most productive or efficient way to get to XP’s tools and goodies. In such cases, the desktop shortcuts really come in handy; here are some of them.
Listing out all will be a very tedious process so let me share the procedure of creating shortcut for one of the extremely useful tools on Windows XP Professional; Group Policy Editor.
GPE
Now, if you are wondering what GPE is really all about then in simple words, GPE is actually a snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console and there is no simple way to launch it.
Here’s the way to turn it into a desktop shortcut for an easy clickable access, rather than struggling with complex commands every time!
Here’s line by line guide to do this:
• Right-click the desktop
• Pull down to New, then
• Move over to Shortcut.
• In Create Shortcut wizard, click Browse.
• Browse you way to C:Windowssystem32.
• Find and select the gpedit.msc file,
• Click next (of course, if you don’t mind typing and know exactly the path and program, you may do that instead).
• On the last screen of the wizard, give your new shortcut a useful name and click Finish.
Yeah, you’re done with it! No more typing the name of the command on command prompt – you should see a shortcut on your desktop.
NOTE: To make it even more convenient drag the shortcut to your toolbar.
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February 18, 2010 at 8:43 am
Interesting as a training comapny we have got rid of Vista on all machines and short cuts are always handy especially to example folders
February 18, 2010 at 9:51 am
Thanks, i will be publishing a glossary of more XP short-cuts pretty soon