Be
forwarned:
this node will require knowledge of how to work a mouse,
a keyboard, and the start menu.I suppose that if you don't know
what you are doing with this, now would be a good time to stop, since this could quite possibly
have evil consequences that I am unaware of.
I am not responsible for setting your
computer on fire.
Start by opening
regedit.exe, the
registry editor that comes with
Windows.
Expand HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, and
select the entry labelled '
*', it should be
at the
very top.
This entry
defines actions and things that are
relevant to all
file classes.
Expand *. Right click on the * folder icon and create a
key, call this key "
shell".
Select the newly created shell key and create another key below this one, call this "
edit".
Select the edit key, and change the
default value to something
appropriate. This value
is the
description that will appear in the menu when you right click on a file.
"Open in &
notepad" would be a
good choice, the
n will be underlined, signifying that
you can press the n key to do this.
Now create a new key under edit, call this "
command", and change the default value in this key
to "C:\WINDOWS\NOTEPAD.EXE %1".
This can also be
adapted to work with any other program you'd like it to, by changing which program the key runs, i.e. "C:\mplayerc\MplayerC.exe %1"
Hooray, now you can open
any file in notepad simply by right clicking on it and selecting notepad.
Yes, this is very useful.
It has come to my attention (by trying to implement this in
Windows XP), that it won't work in XP. It is, however, still relevant to those who are using the versions of Windows that it works on.