Create a Shortcut or Hotkey for the Safely Remove Hardware Dialog If you often use removable USB devices like a flash drive, you are probably already familiar with the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon that sits in the system tray. The problem for many people is that the icon is tiny, and clicking it just right to bring up the menu is a pain. Can’t we just make a shortcut to bring up the dialog?
Of course you can, and it’s really quite easy. Easier than trying to click the tiny icon in the tray, at least… Update: This has been successfully tested on Windows 7 as well. Create a Shortcut to the Safely Remove Hardware Dialog Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose New \ Shortcut: Then paste in the following into the location box: block quote RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll block quote end Give it a name, and you’ll have a shortcut icon… …that will pull up the Safely Remove Hardware dialog. Assign a Shortcut Key If you want to assign a shortcut key to this dialog, you can right-click the icon and open the properties dialog, then go to the Shortcut tab. Add in the shortcut key and close the dialog. As long as the shortcut is on your desktop you shouldn’t have to restart anything for the hotkey to work. You can also move the shortcut to another folder, for instance your quick launch bar. Tip: If you add the shortcut to the Windows Vista quick launch bar, you can use the built-in hotkeys instead of bothering to assign one manually. Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Clear the Clipboard in Windows Have you ever copied something to the clipboard that you don’t want to leave there in case somebody else is going to use your computer? Sure, you can copy something else to the clipboard real quick, but can’t you just make a shortcut or hotkey to clear it? And of course you can, with the built-in clip.exe utility in Windows 7 or Vista. It’s not really meant for clearing the clipboard, but with a little command line magic in a shortcut, we can make it do just that. Note: This is also useful if you copied a very large amount of data to the clipboard and you don’t want it wasting memory anymore. Create a Shortcut Icon to Clear the Clipboard Right-click on the desktop or elsewhere, and choose New \ Shortcut from the menu. Then in the shortcut location box, enter the following command: block quote cmd /c “echo off | clip” block quote end At this point you’ll have an icon that will immediately clear the clipboard… but we can tweak it a bit further. Right-click on the icon and choose Properties, and then change the Run drop-down to “Minimized” to make sure you don’t see the command prompt. You can also assign a shortcut key here. If you click the Change Icon button and then browse down to this file, you can find a clipboard icon: block quote %SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll block quote end Now we’ve got a nice-looking icon that will clear out the clipboard: Note: If you are using Windows XP, you can download clip.exe from Microsoft. Just save the file in the Windows directory and the rest of the hack should work for you. Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Eject the CD/DVD Drive There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but the best way is to use the NirCmd utility from the excellent Nirsoft. It does a lot more than just eject the cd-rom drive, so be sure to read the information on their site about all the capabilities. Create a Shortcut to Eject the CD/DVD Drive Right-click on the desktop or elsewhere and choose New \ Shortcut. In the location box, put the full path to the nircmd.exe file that you downloaded, and append the “cdrom open” command to the end of it, adjusting the drive letter to match your disc drive: block quote “C:\path\to\nircmd.exe” cdrom open D: block quote end Note the location of the quotes.. if you are using a path with spaces in it, you need to make sure the quotes are only around the path to the executable, and the arguments should be placed after the quote. Give the shortcut a meaningful name, like Eject CD or something like that, and you’ll have a new icon (read below on how to use the cd-rom icon as shown) You can move the icon to anywhere you’d like… double-clicking on it will immediately eject the drive. Create a Shortcut to Close the CD/DVD Drive You can follow the same exact instructions as above, but instead of “cdrom open” just substitute “cdrom close”. Assign a Hotkey to the Shortcut Now that we have a shortcut, we can assign a hotkey to the shortcut by right-clicking on the icon and choosing Properties. On the Shortcut tab you’ll see a place to assign the Shortcut key: Add in the shortcut key and close the dialog. As long as the shortcut is on your desktop you shouldn’t have to restart anything for the hotkey to work. You can also move the shortcut to another folder, for instance your quick launch bar. Tip: If you add the shortcut to the Windows Vista quick launch bar, you can use the built-in hotkeys instead of bothering to assign one manually. Assign an Icon to the Shortcut If you click on the Change Icon button in the properties window, you can give the shortcut a more meaningful icon, perhaps the DVD one you see below. You could choose any icon on the system that you’d like, of course. Download NirCmd from nirsoft.net http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html Create a Shortcut Icon or Hotkey to Turn Windows 7 / Vista Firewall On or Off When you are troubleshooting network problems, one of the first things to do is disable the built-in Windows Firewall… but there are just way too many steps required to the firewall on and off. Can’t we make a simple shortcut icon instead? Naturally we can, using the built-in netsh utility that is usually used on the command line to perform advanced networking functions. We’ll simply create a shortcut to it with the appropriate parameters. Note: Always remember to turn the Firewall back on after you are done troubleshooting, especially if you use public wireless networks. Create Shortcut Icons for Enable/Disable Right-click on the desktop or elsewhere, and choose New \ Shortcut from the menu. Then in the shortcut location box, you’ll add one of two commands listed below. Disable Firewall block quote netsh firewall set opmode disable block quote end Enable Firewall block quote netsh firewall set opmode enable block quote end Once you’ve added the correct command, go to the next screen and give the shortcut a helpful name like “Disable Firewall” At this point you should have a shortcut icon, but it won’t work yet without choosing to run as administrator. Right-click the shortcut and choose Properties, and then choose the shortcut tab. In this screen you can assign a shortcut key for this shortcut by adding it into the Shortcut key box. The most important step is to click the Advanced button, so we can choose “Run as administrator” to always run the shortcut in administrator mode. You can also change the icon by using the Change Icon button. If you want the shortcuts to really match, you can change the “Look for icons in this file” to the following: block quote %SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll block quote end In that file you can find the red shield icon as well as the green one… So now I have two shortcuts that not only look good, but are functional. If you want to verify that the shortcuts are working, use one of them and then open Windows Firewall through the start menu, and click on the link for “Turn Windows Firewall on or off” Then you should be able to see that the firewall is either on or off. The same shortcuts should also work on Windows XP or Windows 7, You don’t need to run as administrator in XP, of course. Note: Using these shortcuts will very briefly flash the command prompt window on the screen. Update: This has been successfully tested on Windows 7 as well. To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. 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