Reveal and Access to Windows Vista Hidden Context-Sensitive (Right Click) Menu Item – Open Command Prompt Here & Copy as Path
In Windows Vista, there are several useful and powerful context-sensitive menu items or right click menu items that are hidden from common view that fills with usual suspect menu items such as Open, Explore, Search, Copy, Cut, Paste, Create Shortcut, Delete, Send To, Rename and Properties. Among the hidden extra right click menu items include “Open Command Prompt Here” and “Copy as Path”. To reveal and get access to see the extra context-sensitive or right click menu items or menu commands, Windows Vista users just need to press and hold down the Shift key while right clicking on any folder or file.
Open Command Prompt Here is now built-in into Windows Vista operating system, and is previously available to Windows XP users as an additional Windows XP PowerToys add-on. When a user click on Open Command Prompt Here while right click on a folder, a command prompt window will open with the current working directory automatically set to the folder’s actual location, instead of the default directory set by Windows’ environment variable. If the target folder which command prompt will change the working directory to is a network location or network folder, Windows Vista will silently maps a network drive to that location before opening the folder to make sure that the command prompt opened has a valid path containing a drive letter, and will automatically deletes the network drive mapping when the command prompt is closed.
Open Command Prompt Here functionality is especially useful for programmer or developer who always switching between Windows desktop explorer and command shell prompt at specific path, especially a very deep directory hierarchy, to access certain scripts or execute or build from command line. The Open Command Prompt Here eliminates the need to manually traverse the directories or folders with lots of “CD” command.
You can also use registry hack to open “elevated command window here as administrator“.
Copy as Path is another useful hidden right click menu option that will retrieve and copy the full path to certain file or directories to clipboard memory.
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February 16th, 2009 03:32
[...] Windows Vista and Windows 7 in order to reveal additional hidden contextual menu commands such as Open Command Window Here, Copy as Path, Open in New Process and to reveal typical right click context menu for icons pinned [...]
January 13th, 2009 11:11
Please add, early in the article, that you have to right-click in the right-hand pane, not in the tree. I always did it in the tree in XP, and for a while i thought it did not work at all in my Vista.
March 7th, 2008 06:53
Nice tip – now if only it worked in the folder tree in Explorer view…