Windows 7 Hack: Start Windows Explorer from ‘My Computer’

By Angsuman Chakraborty, Gaea News Network
Monday, January 19, 2009

This is just a small customization but pretty useful for people who like to play with settings and love doing tweaks and tricks with Windows. Supposedly you belong to that group who love exploring different hard disk drives or removable disks more than personal documents’ folder. Then why don’t we try to set the Windows Explorer to start from My Computer instead?

To do this, navigate to Windows Explorer in the Start Menu (it’s in the Accessories folder). Then edit the properties and change the target to read:
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

But this will make explorer open folders/drives in new windows instead of the current window.

This target will fix it:

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /e,::{20d04fe0-3aea-1069-a2d8-08002b30309d}

Happy exploring.

Anyway, if you are interested in reading more Windows 7 features and hacks, you must read our 10 Top Windows 7 articles. Hey we also have a great Windows 7 up-to-date coverage for you. I am sure you will not want to miss them.
Filed under: Hacking, How To, Windows, Windows 7

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Discuss Bellow
Discussion

Chris
March 12, 2010: 6:11 pm

I think it helps to delete the change the Taskbar properties one and then delete the other one which shows up from the Start Menu.

Oddball
January 3, 2010: 1:48 pm

It worked perfectly at first. After a few days all of a sudden it didn’t work anymore. When I click on the modified Windows Explorer shortcut now, nothing happens. I even set back the system to a point where it was still working. It didn’t help though. Windows Explorer doesn’t work with any other command either - such as to open a specific folder. Neither do the commands work from the command line. Any suggestions please?

Yea
December 19, 2009: 5:50 pm

Thanks for posting this little fix. Huge help, here’s search phrase: windows 7 explorer disable opening new windows from my computer.

Mack Allison
December 11, 2009: 1:50 pm

It requires local console access, which people should not have if they can’t be trusted around your machines. It won’t break a user into an active directory domain, so it’s essentially just rooting the local client.

In my experience, these local exploits are your friend. . . mostly. watch our for your win 7 laptop at a local hacker con though.

MARK
November 12, 2009: 9:28 pm

Please help me!!! i cant use my outlook the icons dont show whats open in the tashbar all is working well in the admid side but i need it to work on the other acount i recovered and still not working WHAT DO I DO

Dave
November 7, 2009: 2:45 am

To fix the taskbar explorer launcher, simply close existing explorer windows, then while holding shift right mouse click the taskbar explorer icon. Select “Properties” and apply the second target replacement string listed above. Now all future explorer sessions spawned from the taskbar will show “My Computer” by default.

Thanks for posting this article!

Dan
November 5, 2009: 9:35 pm

Thank you!

If that doesn’t work for you, try this:

%WinDir%\explorer.exe /e,::{20d04fe0-3aea-1069-a2d8-08002b30309d}

HumbledMage
October 13, 2009: 7:00 pm

Thanks! 2nd target code worked for me as well :) Good to finally see my hard disks by default now. Thanks again.

Moneybankz
August 16, 2009: 1:39 am

Thanks Man. I Was Sick Of The Libaries Thingy. The Second Target Things Works Perfect . :)


Marc
May 1, 2009: 7:49 pm

I got it to work when I click on the explorer icon but not when I use the “windows + E” shortcut. How can you configure that to do the same?

Scared
March 5, 2009: 2:30 pm

Was not able to get this to work. It would have been prefect if it did because that is one thing that i hate in win7
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