Work faster with Windows Vista

In previous blog posts I’ve talked about how you can work faster by creating desktop shortcuts, enabling you to quickly accomplish tasks by simply clicking on them. I’ve recently found out about a neat little program called NirCmd which can help you to make shortcuts for all kinds of tasks, and makes working with Windows Vista faster than ever.
 
It’s available for free download from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html. All you need to do is extract the files from the .zip archive folder and place it somewhere memorable. I recommend creating a new folder on your main hard drive (in my case C:\) and name it “nircmd”.

To create a shortcut, all you need to do is right-click on your desktop and go to New > Shortcut. In the location box type in the location of nircmd.exe (which is where you created the new folder) . In my case this is C:\nircmd\nircmd.exe. Then enter in the command from either the list found here or below.

For example, if I wanted to make a desktop shortcut that turned my PC’s sound on and off I would create a shortcut for:
C:\nircmd\nircmd.exe mutesysvolume 2

Then all I would need to do to mute the sound was click on that shortcut. If you right-click on your newly created shortcut and select Properties in the Shortcut key: textbox you can assign a key combination, such as Alt and M, to run the shortcut instantly!

exitwin poweroff
Turns off your PC

win min class "IEFrame"
Minimises all Internet Explorer windows

win close class "IEFrame"
Closes all Internet Explorer windows
 
setdisplay wwww hhhh cc
Sets your monitor’s display settings, where wwww is the width in pixels, hhhh the height in pixels and cc the number of colours. For example, if I wanted to create a shortcut to change my display settings to 1680x1050 resolution with 32bit colour I would define the shortcut’s location as C:\nircmd\nircmd.exe setdisplay1680 1050 32
 
dlg "" "" click yes
Answer Yes to a standard Windows dialogue box
 
There are many more commands you can add to your shortcuts; these can be found at http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html.
 
If you want to create your own icons for the shortcuts you’ve created, check out our guide to creating icons.