Thursday, September 27, 2007

Another question about customizing XP...

Okay. So it's almost 6 years since Windows XP first shipped. And you mean to tell me that no one has developed a free utility to customize the desktop right-click context menu?

Using Openbox has spoiled me. I thought for sure something would be out there for use on my XP machine here at work. I'd even do a registry hack. There are fixes for modifying the context menu on files and folders, but not on the desktop as far as I can tell. Please someone... tell me I'm wrong. Show me the way...



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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Richard,

I'm not sure what you want to do specifically but you can create and delete context menu options with Tweak UI>Templates. Is this what you are looking for?

RichardQuerin said...

No. That looks like it's for editing the Right-Click->New menu entries for creating new blank documents. What I want is just to add my own shortcuts to launch applications from the right-click menu on the desktop. Kind of like the quicklaunch bar but accessible from the right-click context menu and customizable.

I remember fiddling around with something called LiteStep several years back which gave this kind of functionality -> http://images.betanews.com/screenshots/1067834595-1.jpg

RichardQuerin said...

Not sure if that URL is cut off or not.. here it is linkpotted:

http://linkpot.net/killjoys/

Anonymous said...

Oh, I see. Well I'm sure it's in the registry somewhere. I couldn't find it but I was able to add apps to the right-click on the My Computer Icon. For instance, I added Notepad. Not exactly what you want but close.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\...
{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}...
\shell\Notepad]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\...
{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}...
\shell\Notepad\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\System32\\notepad.exe"

I had to break the above lines with "..." to fit it on your blog.

Anonymous said...

I was going to suggest TweakUI too. Have you looked through all the options in TweakUI? Also, there's a "PowerToys" section on MS for XP boxes:

PowerToys

Anonymous said...

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\OpenWithList]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

These are some of the registry keys you'll be needing to edit in order to create your own custom keys. Look at some of the "custom" ones that have been placed there by your software that thinks it's important enough to mess with your registry in order to figure out the format.

;) Yes, it IS amazingly easy in Openbox, isn't it?