Placing a Command Prompt at Your Fingertips

It’s possible to change the Windows Explorer registry settings so that you can get a command prompt

wherever you need one. For example, say you’re viewing the System32 folder and see a utility that

you’ve never seen there before. You can use this registry change to right-click the folder and choose

Command Prompt Here from the context menu to see a command prompt in that folder, rather than

your home folder, as normal. Use the following steps to make this change manually.

1.

Select the Start

Run command. Type RegEdit in the Open field and click OK. You’ll see

the Registry Editor.

NOTE When working with Vista, you’ll often see a User Account Control (UAC) dialog box appear that

asks whether you really intend to perform a particular action. Although this dialog box can become

quite annoying, it does serve a useful purpose in alerting you to actions from viruses and other nefarious

applications. Whenever you see the UAC dialog box and know that you’ve started a particular

action, simply click Continue and Vista will continue the action (assuming you have the proper

rights). See the “Vista Changes for the Command Line” section of the chapter for more details.

2. Open the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell folder. Right-click this folder and choose

New Key from the context menu. The Registry Editor will create a new type for you.

3. Type Command_Prompt_Here as the key name and press Enter.

4. Right-click the Command_Prompt_Here key and choose New Key from the context menu.

Type command for the new key name and press Enter. You now have two new keys, as shown

in Figure 1.10.

5. Right-click the command key and choose New String Value from the context menu. Type

cmd.exe /k \"cd %1\" as the new string value. Exercise extreme care with this step. Press

Enter. The new value should look like the one shown in Figure 1.10.

6. Close the Registry Editor.

Figure 1.10

 

Create new registry

keys to hold the Command

Prompt Here

context menu option.

Congratulations, you now have a tool that you can use to create a command prompt directly

from Windows Explorer. Open a new copy of Windows Explorer, right-click a folder, and you’ll see

the new Command Prompt Here entry. Select this option to create a new command prompt in the

folder that you right-clicked. This is the first use of the command line in this book. You can learn

more about CMD.EXE in the “Using the CMD Switches” section of Chapter 7.

You don’t have to go through this set of steps every time you want to add this feature to a copy

of Windows. The following registry script will perform the same task. To use this approach, open

a copy of Notepad and type the script shown here precisely, as shown.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\Command_Prompt_Here]

@="Command Prompt Here"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\Command_Prompt_Here\command]

@="cmd.exe /k \"cd %1\""

When you finish, select the File Save command. Type CommandPromptHere.REG in the File

Name field. Choose All Files in the Save as Type field. Click Save. You now have a new registry

script for adding the Command Prompt Here feature. All you need to do is double-click this file in

Windows Explorer to make the addition.