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I’m in LA at a friends house right now, and after an enjoyable evening with an old coworker, I’ll be heading to my free Disneyland ticket Saturday morning.  That’s right – this year, on your birthday – Disneyland is free.  I’ve never been – so this should be quite fun.

Forgot my camera though – hope my buddy has one…

Just another way in which Microsoft just keeps breaking my productivity by making me fight their systems instead of making it easy to get real work done.  In XP – there was a handy “Open command prompt here…” Powertoy that allowed you to right-click on a directory/folder and get a command prompt at that location (no directory switching).  But no such luck on Vista.  Now add the pain of UAC and you need TWO kinds – “open a command prompt here…” and “open a command prompt here (in administrator mode)…”

Well, here’s how to have BOTH:

“Open a command prompt here…” (courtesy here)

1. Open regedt32.exe/registry editor
2. Browse to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Classes/Folder/Shell
3. Change the default REG_SZ string to whatever text you want to appear in the right-click menu. (such as:“Open command prompt here…” without the quotes)
4. Create a new registry key type within your newly created command prompt shell named “command,” and set the default string to:
   cmd.exe /k pushd %1
   You may need to add %SystemRoot%system32 before the cmd.exe if the executable can’t be found.
5. The changes should take place immediately. Right click a folder and your new menu item should appear.
   

“Open Command Prompt here (admin mode)…”

1. Same as above – open Regedt32
2. navigate to/create [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellrunas]
3. Set the default REG_SZ string for this key to “Administrator Command Prompt here”
4. Add a new string value in the same same key called “NoWorkingDirectory” and make sure the string is set to “”
5. Navigate to /create [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellrunascommand]
6. Set the default string to “cmd.exe /k “pushd %L && title Command Prompt””
7. Navigate to/create [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDriveshellrunas]
8. Set the default REG_SZ string “Administrator Command Prompt here”
9. Create another new string value in the same key called “NoWorkingDirectory” and make sure the string is set to “”
10. Navigate to/creat [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDriveshellrunascommand]
11. Set the default REG_SZ string to “cmd.exe /k “pushd %L && title Command Prompt””

Or open notepad on AdminOpen.reg and copy/paste the following into it (courtesy of here):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellrunas] @="Administrator Command Prompt here" "NoWorkingDirectory"=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellrunascommand] @="cmd.exe /k "pushd %L && title Command Prompt""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDriveshellrunas] @="Administrator Command Prompt here" "NoWorkingDirectory"=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDriveshellrunascommand] @="cmd.exe /k "pushd %L && title Command Prompt""