Tip: Get Vista’s “Open Command Window Here” on XP

Sometimes, we don’t think about the simplest tricks.

Steven Harman has a new post with some tips for developing with Visual Studio.OpenCommandWindowHereVista

One cool option Windows Vista has, is that in Windows Explorer, when you right-click on a folder, the context sensitive menu gives the “Open Command Window Here” option. It does what it says: you open the Command Prompt with the current directory set to the one you just clicked.

A commenter, earljon, explains how to enable the same option in Windows XP. It’s one of those things were you ask yourself why you didn’t do that sooner! Here’s his explanation:

On the Command Window context part, some of us don’t already have this but one can manually add a context menu for command prompt by following simple steps:

  1. On Windows Explorer, Tools/Folder Options.
  2. Click the tab File Types.
  3. Find the File Type “Folder” and click the Advanced button.
  4. Click the New button, and type “Open Command Window Here” (no quotes) on the Action text box and type “cmd.exe” as the application that will perform.
  5. Close all the windows and new context menu is created.

Very useful when you need the Command Prompt.

Disclaimer: the picture included with this post was ripped from Steven Harman’s post.