Hotkey for Creating New Folder in Windows Explorer

Hotkey for Creating New Folder in Windows Explorer

Have you ever wondered if there is a hotkey to create a new folder in Windows Explorer?

New Folder Hotkey in Windows 7
Windows 7 natively includes a shortcut key combination to create a new folder: Ctrl+Shift+N Simply use this shortcut key anywhere in Windows Explorer, and a new folder will be instantly created:

Using the Keyboard Accelerator Keys
You can use the keyboard accelerator keys: Alt+F to bring up the file menu, and then for the New menu, and then for new folder. So your shortcut key sequence ends up being F+W+F with the Alt key held down. (Try it out).

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Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Open Task Manager’s "All Users" View in Windows 7 or Vista

Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Open Task Manager’s "All Users" View in Windows 7 or Vista
Have you ever wondered how to open up Task Manager with the “All Users” view instead of just your own processes? One of our readers wrote in with this same question, so I’m writing it up for everybody.

In case you are confused about what we’re talking about… on the Processes tab in Task Manager there’s a button called “Show processes from all users” which will re-open Task Manager in order to show all the processes, which can be annoying if you need to do it a lot.

Create the Task Manager Shortcut

Right-click on the desktop or elsewhere, and then choose New \ Shortcut from the menu.

Then in the shortcut location box, add the following command:

    taskmgr.exe

Once you’ve added the command, go to the next screen and give the shortcut a useful name – I chose “Task Manager (All Users)” as the name since it seemed descriptive enough.

Now right-click on the shortcut and open up Properties, where you can add a shortcut key if you’d like (note that the shortcut needs to be on the desktop or in the start menu for this to work)…

And now the most important step, click the Advanced button and choose the “Run as administrator” checkbox.

Now you’ll have a shortcut that will immediately open up Task Manager to the all users view (after a UAC prompt).

For extra credit, you could create the shortcut without a UAC prompt (it just takes a little more work).

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Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Turn Off the Monitor

Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Turn Off the Monitor
Have you ever wanted to hit a shortcut key to turn off the monitor? Sure, you can use the Win+L combination to lock the screen, but that leaves your monitor on… and those of us with multiple monitors find it a pain to hunt down the power buttons all the time.

First we’ll show you how to simply power off the monitor, and then how to both lock and power it off.Create a Shortcut to Turn Off the Monitor. To create this shortcut, we’ll first need to grab a tiny multi-purpose utility called NirCmd from the great folks over at NirSoft. This Swiss-army knife tool can do an amazing array of tasks, including powering off the monitor. All we really need to do is create a shortcut to it.

Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose New \ Shortcut:

Then you’ll want to browse to the location where you saved the nircmd.exe file, and add the following arguments:

    “C:\path\to\nircmd.exe” cmdwait 1000 monitor off

Make sure the path has quotes around it, and then you add the extra arguments, which will wait 1 second before powering off the monitor (otherwise Windows might misinterpret your last keystroke and wake back up).

Next you can go into the shortcut properties and assign a shortcut key, and then click Change Icon to pick a better one than the default.

In Vista, at least, there’s a great icon for turning off the monitor… pick the somewhat ugly one from the list below:

And when the icon actually shows up, it’s nice and shiny. Of course you are free to pick your own icon instead.
 

Lock the Workstation Too

For extra credit, you can create a shortcut that both locks the workstation as well as turns the monitor off. Unfortunately the Nircmd way involves more steps than necessary in Vista (in my testing, at least), so I’ve created a tiny executable called LockAndPowerDown.exe that will do both in one step.

To install it, simply download and extract the executable, and create a shortcut to it just as you did in the step above. To find the same icon, click on Change Icon, and then paste in “C:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll” into the browse box.

The application is written in AutoHotkey and the source code is included in the download file. Enjoy!

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Create a Shortcut to the Stored User Names and Passwords Dialog in Windows

Create a Shortcut to the Stored User Names and Passwords Dialog in Windows

If you’ve ever saved a password when connecting to a website that requires authentication, for a remote desktop session or a mapped drive, you might have wondered where those passwords are saved. If you are a long time reader, you already know where, but you might be interested in how to create a shortcut directly to the dialog where you can manage those logons.

You can add this into your folder of useful shortcuts… sure, you might not use it every day, but it’s good to know how to do it.

Create the Shortcut

Right-click on the desktop and choose New \ Shortcut from the menu.
In the location box, enter in the following command, and then on the next page give the shortcut a helpful name.

    rundll32.exe keymgr.dll, KRShowKeyMgr

Once you have the shortcut, you’ll want to right-click on it and choose Properties, then click the Change Icon button on the Shortcut tab.

If you change the textbox value to the following file, you can find the matching icon for the shortcut (adjusting if your Windows is installed elsewhere)

    C:\Windows\System32\keymgr.dll

Now you should have a nice matching icon…
Which will open up the Stored User Names and Passwords dialog.
Note that you can also use this to backup and restore your saved passwords, and it should work in either Windows 7, Vista or XP.

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Create Administrator Mode Shortcuts Without UAC Prompts in Windows 7 or Vista

Create Administrator Mode Shortcuts Without UAC Prompts in Windows 7 or Vista
One of the most talked about annoyances in Windows Vista are the UAC prompts that constantly pop up when you are trying to make system changes. It’s especially irritating when you often need to run a particular tool that requires administrator mode in order to run. Thankfully there’s a simple hack that you can do to create an administrator mode shortcut that doesn’t prompt for UAC.

Note: This should also work on Windows 7.

This works by setting up a scheduled task to run the application in Administrator mode, and then setting up a separate shortcut that tells the scheduled task to run. If that sounds difficult, it’s really not… just follow through the instructions below.

Note: Because you are required to click through a UAC prompt to setup the scheduled task, it’s not really a security loophole.

Create the Scheduled Task Item

Open up Task Scheduler through the start menu search box (usually you can just type task), and then on the right-hand side click the “Create Task” link:

The first thing you need to do is give the task a short, simple name, preferably without any spaces in it. Then check the box for “Run with highest privileges” (very important)

Now switch to the Actions tab, click the New button, and then browse down to the application that you are trying to start.

Close out of the dialogs by clicking the OK button, which should create the new task in the list. You can right-click on it and choose “Run” at this point, simply to make sure that it launches the application the way you were expecting.

At this point our scheduled tasks setup is done, so you can close out of that if you want… as long as you remember the name that you used for the task.

Create the Shortcut to Start the Task

Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose New \ Shortcut from the menu.

Now here’s where the real magic happens… we need to add a command that will run the scheduled task, passing in the name of the task that we used. As you can see, I used runregedit as the name for the task.

Make sure you enter the task name like this, replacing the capitalized letters for the name of your task. (It’s not case sensitive)

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Create Icons to Start the Screensaver on Windows 7 or Vista

Create Icons to Start the Screensaver on Windows 7 or Vista
Reader Jeffrey wrote in asking how to create an icon to start up the screensaver in Windows Vista. This question is so common that I figured I’d write up the answer for everybody, as well as provide a downloadable set of shortcuts to all the default screensavers (for Vista users).

Note that this technique should work for Windows 7, Vista, or even XP.

Create Screensaver Icon

Right-click on the desktop and choose New \ Shortcut from the menu.
In order to launch the screensaver, you’ll need to enter the full path to the screensaver file, followed by “/s”

    %systemroot%\system32\Bubbles.scr /s

You would want to substitute the name of the screensaver where you see “Bubbles.scr” above. Also note that I used %systemroot% instead of C:\windows because not every install uses the C: drive.

If you don’t know the filename, you can browse down to your system32 folder and then search for “.scr” using the search box:

You should see all of the names of all the screensavers installed on your system, which you can use in the location field.

Download Shortcut Icons (Vista Only)

If you’ve prefer, I made shortcuts for all the default screensavers and zipped them up. You can just download and extract the file, and then use whichever ones you want.

Note: I’m fairly certain I didn’t miss any default screensavers in the list, but it’s certainly possible since it’s 6am and I’m still awake.

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