As I’ve written many times over the years, thanks to my rebellious nature, I don’t keep anything in the My Documents folder. It may be that I’m the only person left in the Windows world with a My Documents folder that is completely empty. Okay, realistically my naked My Documents folder has a lot to do with the fact that all my data files are stored on a different drive. But I’m still rebellious and I think anything that starts "My" whatever is just stupid.
In any case, because of my rebellion, I’ve written many articles on the myriad ways you can change your preferences if you boldly have stored your files somewhere other than the C drive. So I was particularly excited to run across this little tip.
When you start Windows Explorer, by default, it opens up to the My Documents folder. In my case, since that folder is empty, every time, I open Explorer, I immediately need to navigate to show the drives on my computer to get to my data files. As it turns out, there’s a way to tell Explorer to show you top-level drives, instead of My Documents. Yay!
You can change your desktop shortcut and the Start menu item by changing a line in the Properties dialog box. To change the Start menu entry, choose Start|Programs|Accessories. Right-click the Windows Explorer entry and choose Properties.
In the Target box, it normally says %SystemRoot%explorer.exe. Remove that text and replace it with %SystemRoot%explorer.exe /n, /e, /select, C: and then click OK.
Now when you select Windows Explorer from the menu, it goes to your top-level drive and not My Documents. Changing the Windows Explorer desktop shortcut is similar. Just right-click it and choose Properties. Then put %SystemRoot%explorer.exe /n, /e, /select, C: in the Target field. When you click the icon, no more My Documents. Oh, happy day!