Customizing Win2K Menus

December 6, 2004 2:42 PM

I want to customize my win2k context menus. Google found me this, which is great, but...

... each change I make that way has to be associated with a particular file extension. What if I want an option that pertains to all files? Specifically, I find myself wanting to view oddly-named files as text often enough that it'd be really nice to have a "View with notepad.exe" option always handy.

posted by squidlarkin to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

you could install textpad. it adds itself to your context menu and can be used to open up pretty much anything. it has the habit of opening up in a hex editing mode for some filetypes though.

textpad.
posted by juv3nal at 2:47 PM on December 6, 2004

Response by poster: Ooh, that could very well be better than what I had in mind. I'd still like to know how to do it though, just for the principle of it.
posted by squidlarkin at 2:53 PM on December 6, 2004

You could stick a shortcut to notepad (or whatever) in the SendTo folder. I've used that before to add an audio editor to context. On the Win2k I'm on at the moment, the SendTo folder was hidden, but it's in there, under Documents and Settings\username (and also ..\default user, apparently).
posted by pompomtom at 3:02 PM on December 6, 2004

there are registry tweaks that allow you to add notepad to your context menus. try googling something like "notepad registry tweak" or "open notepad"

here is one for example.
posted by TheIrreverend at 3:19 PM on December 6, 2004

I use ContextEdit to manage my context-menu shell extensions. It was a PC Magazine-only utility (which means $$$ to download), but Google provides. It's not exactly user-friendly, but poke around a bit and you'll get a feel for it. Restart Explorer to see changes.
posted by j.edwards at 3:20 PM on December 6, 2004

I use the SendTo method mentioned above, and would recommend it. It's easy and easily removable. I'd add Wordpad, and not Notepad, though, since it has a lot of weird limitations with large files, line endings etc.
posted by cameleon at 5:28 AM on December 7, 2004