When you click the shortcut, your PC will shut down, so make sure you save your work before you test it. You should now have a new shortcut on your desktop. Choose the one you want to use and click the OK button twice. ) will show you a list of potential icons. Figure D Find Properties on the menu.įrom the Properties control panel, shown in Right-click on the icon in question to get the context menu shown inĪnd then navigate to the Properties menu item.

In Windows 7, changing an icon is similar to how you changed icons in previous versions of the operating system.

Technically, you could stop here, but I prefer to give these shortcuts an icon that will help me remember what it is that they do. I suggest you name the shortcut to correspond to the action it will perform. Type the following command into the box and then click Next. Figure B Enter the command for your new shortcut.įor our example, we will enter the specific command that will shut down a Windows PC. This is where you will enter the specific command strings to make your new shortcut do what you want it to do. When you click the Shortcut menu item, you will arrive at the input screen shown in Figure A Navigate the menu to create a new shortcut. First, right-click on a clear spot on the desktop and navigate to New | Shortcut, as shown in There are other ways to accomplish this task, but this is my preferred method. Is this a case of old tricks die hard?Ĭreating a shortcut should be familiar to almost everyone, but we will walk through the process just for clarity. When I published this back in February 2010, there was some question about whether these shortcuts were needed anymore, but yet it is still a popular tip. The procedure for Windows 7 is very similar to that of Vista and XP, but now you can pin those freshly created shortcuts to the Start Menu or the Taskbar or both.

One of the most often-requested Microsoft Windows tweaks is for shortcuts that shut down, power down, and restart a Windows session.

How to create shortcut in windows 8