After reading my article on forcing Windows Explorer to start at the C drive, instead of in the My Documents folder, a reader from England wrote in with a problem. She doesn’t launch Explorer from a desktop icon on the desktop. Instead she right-clicks the Start button and selects Explorer from the short menu. Changing the properties doesn’t work as it does on a shortcut.
Since I never launch Explorer this way, the problem never occurred to me. But the question provided a challenge, and after a bit of research I determined that yes, there is a way you can do it, but it’s a little clunky. You can put the Explorer Properties into a batch file and then add the batch file to the right-click menu. Those items also appear on the Start menu when you right-click.
To do it, follow these steps:
1. Open Notepad. In the file put these lines:
@echo off
%SystemRoot%explorer.exe /n, /e, /select, C:
2. Save it as a batch file with a reasonably memorable name into your Windows folder, such as:
C:windowsexplorer_c.bat
3. Open Windows Explorer and choose Tools|Folder Options.
4. Click the File Types tab, and then click Folder.
5. Click the Advanced button and then click New.
6. In the New Action dialog box, give your action a name such as Explore C Drive (or something that makes sense to you).
7. In the Application used to perform action box, browse to find your batch file.
8. When you’re done, click OK.
Now, the new option is available when you right-click the Start menu. You’ll probably see a flash of the batch file running, but Explorer goes to the C drive, not My Documents. For this procedure to work, you should change your folder options to show all files with their file extensions and show system files or you may have trouble finding the batch file.
Showing system files is also located in the folder options.