Windows Vista users may be familiar with the “command prompt here” shortcut that appears when they right-click a folder in Windows Explorer. The command prompt always displays for folders, even if the user doesn’t have administrative privileges. This shortcut is convenient for quickly viewing or changing file permissions, but it can be annoying if you want to access the command prompt only for certain folders. In Windows Vista, you can disable the command prompt always displaying for folders by following these steps:

  1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the folder that you want to disable the command prompt always displaying for.
  2. Right-click the folder and select Properties from the menu that appears.
  3. On the General tab, under Display options, click Change display name and type “command prompt here (not applicable)” in the text box next to Always show this item on this computer. Click OK to save your changes and close Windows Explorer. ..

There’s a simple registry hack you can do that will enable “Open Command Window Here” item without holding down the shift key:

 

You can either manually edit the registry, or use the downloadable registry hack files to do it.

Manual Registry Hack

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key to add the right-click menu to drive icons:

Rename the “Extended” key on the right to something else, like “Extended-Orig”. (Note that you could simply delete the value, but renaming it ensures that you can quickly rename it back to reverse the change)

To add the item to the folder context menu, browse down to the following key:

And rename the same “Extended” key here. The changes should be immediate.

Downloadable Registry Hack

Simply download, extract, and double-click on the EnableCommandPromptHereAlways.reg file to enter the information into the registry. There’s also an included file to reverse the change.

Download EnableCommandPromptHereAlways Registry Hack