Creative Uses for Desktop Shortcuts

It turns out that there are some really niffty ways to use desktop shortcuts in
Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

• email : send email to same person or set of people
  a LOT?
  Create a shortcut and for the location, enter:
  mailto:[email protected]
  Send jokes out to 10 emails?
  
  mailto:[email protected],[email protected], …
  
  
  
• URL : launch favorite web site
  See details in
  my User Tip #49: Launch URL from
  Windows Desktop Icon
  
  
  
• lock PC : see details in my User Tip #47: Create Lock Desktop Icon
  
  
  
  
• Control Panel Applets: variant of technique in my
  Admin Tip #130: Control Applets
  if
  you can run them from a batch file, you can put them in a shortcut
  
  
  
• Administrative Tools :
  in the system32 folder
  of XP or W2K is the msc files. If you use one or more of the admin utils often,
  create a desktop shortcut to a .msc file. msc file listing on my XP workstation:
  

   
  
           Directory of E:\WINDOWS\system32
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            42,339 certmgr.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            41,762 ciadv.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            38,302 compmgmt.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            33,079 devmgmt.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            41,397 dfrg.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            33,673 diskmgmt.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            56,678 eventvwr.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            32,760 fsmgmt.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            34,871 gpedit.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            42,166 lusrmgr.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            26,209 ntmsmgr.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            32,968 ntmsoprq.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            58,273 perfmon.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            44,451 rsop.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            36,364 secpol.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            33,464 services.msc
  
           08/18/2001  06:00 AM            63,488 wmimgmt.msc
  
        

  Experiment with these as shortcuts.
  

I have other shortcuts on my desktop but they are fairly
obvious such as the “telnet is-it-true.org”. If you have a neat use of
shortcuts, please let me know: Wayne.