Command

Windows Tip: Take Command of Your Windows Experience

Command-line switches sound scary but they're not. In fact, they're just the thing you need to make Windows Explorer work your way. We're not talking about Internet Explorer, we're talking about the Explorer that let's you look at the files on your hard drive.

Open an MS-DOS prompt. (Yes you'll need good old DOS commands to navigate to the folder of your choice.) Then enter the command: explorer /e,. (That's explorer, space, slash, e, comma, period).

A handy Windows Explorer hack
Get RealPlayer.

Then after you've played with the commands and worked out one you like, just create a shortcut using that exact command or insert it into an existing shortcut.

Here are a couple combinations to try.

Explorer /e,/select,c:\
This opens a two-pane Explorer view with none of the drives expanded. This is handy if you have multiple drives and use them all frequently.

Explorer /e,d:\
This opens a two-pane Explorer window that initially displays the contents of drive D:.

Explorer /e,/root,d:\data
This switch combination opens a two-pane window that initially displays the contents of the data folder on drive D:, and from which the user cannot navigate anywhere other than in or below that folder.

One caveat you need to keep in mind is that in some configurations, the /select,subobject switch seems to fail. The subobject's parent folder is opened in the left pane and highlighted in the folder tree, but nothing is visibly highlighted in the list of files and folders. If you press Tab to move the focus to the detail list, however, you'll see that the subobject is indeed selected.

Thanks to Neil J. Rubenking, contributing technical editor of PC Magazine http://www.pcmag.com/ for this tip. For more details on playing with these command-line configurations, read Neil's full article http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/solutions/0,8224,2425962,00.html.