Add useful items to My Computer

by Jordan Running Aug 18th 2006

Whenever I'm troubleshooting Windows network issues (which is disturbingly often) I tend to look for Network Connections in My Computer (rather than Control Panel), but of course it's never there. Until now. Tech-Recipes has a great tip for adding a few new items to My Computer. Through an easy registry tweak (at your own risk, blah blah) you can add not only Network Connections but also Administrative Tools, Printers and Fax Devices, Scheduled Tasks, My Network Places, and Recycle Bin. Tech-Recipes says that you have to reboot your computer after making the changes, but in my case all it took was refreshing My Computer (F5). I'll be very happy never to have to dig around for Network Connections again.

[Via Lifehacker]

Update: Here are a few more entries that you can add to My Computer not mentioned by the Tech-Recipes article. I dug these up by poking around the ControlPanel\NameSpace section of the registry, and they may or may not be useful under My Computer. Anybody know of any others?

Portable Media Devices: {640167b4-59b0-47a6-b335-a6b3c0695aea}
Scanners and Cameras: {E211B736-43FD-11D1-9EFB-0000F8757FCD}
Folder Options: {6DFD7C5C-2451-11d3-A299-00C04F8EF6AF}
Fonts: {D20EA4E1-3957-11d2-A40B-0C5020524152}
Taskbar and Start Menu: {0DF44EAA-FF21-4412-828E-260A8728E7F1}

Tags: hack, mycomputer, productivity, registry, tip, trick, tweak, windows

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Josh said 3:00AM on 8-19-2006

"Reboot and the changes will show up the next time you open the 'My Computer' window"?

The trend continues... "A gnat has farted in the general area of your Windows PC, reboot for the changes to take effect." Meanwhile, the only thing you really need to restart Linux for is a kernel upgrade/re-compile.

BM5k said 11:17PM on 8-19-2006

Mine worked right away, no restart required.

Vit said 2:02AM on 8-20-2006

Small free tool - Folder2MyPC can add any icon to MyComputer window - URL - http://eng.softq.org/Folder2mypc

Bug said 4:04AM on 8-20-2006

As posted in LifeHacker in a comment, you can use this to put them EVERYWHERE.

Robert said 8:26AM on 8-21-2006

Unfortunately, viewing the linked page at 800x600 (all I have available on this KLUNKER) truncates the registry location to create the keys in... Can someone please post it here?

Thanks!

Josh said 11:01PM on 8-21-2006

Robert, don't feel bad, it got truncated on my 1280x800 widescreen also.

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