You can pin any run command to your taskbar or start screen on your windows 8 using the following method. In one of my previous video I have discussed on how you can pin shut down and lock PC shortcuts to task bar, In this post let us see how we can pin any command to start screen of your windows 8 operating system or to the task bar . It is very simple all you need to know the run command for that particular program or application.
Pin Any Command to Taskbar or windows 8 start Screen
In this post let us pin directly the run prompt box itself to the taskbar of windows 8, Run Command has been part of windows since windows 95 and it has been removed on the start menu from windows vista or windows 7 to replace the run by windows search. Same is the case in windows 8. This is for the people who frequently access run box and type in command over there.
The steps are very simple just know the run command for the application you want to pin, Just google for the list of run commands or here is a simple pdf for the list of run commands.
Method 1 : Windows Search Way
1 : Open the start screen by hitting on “windows” button on your keyboard , it will bring up the start screen of your windows 8.
2 : Just type in the run command you want to Pin it to Start Screen or to the Taskbar, This will search for the command using the windows default search and any command that you type will show up on the start screen. For example I want to pin DirectX diagnostic tool to both start screen and taskbar , So I will just type “dxdiag” which is the run command for the DirectX diagnostic tool in start screen.
3. Just Right Click on the displayed result , and now you can see options for it to “Pin to Start” or “Pin to Taskbar” . Select the options for the command to pin to taskbar or start screen.
4. The Advantage of this method is that you are searching it using the windows search feature , So you need not know the run commands for the application to pin it to the taskbar. For example the run command for run box is “%windir%explorer.exe shell:::{2559a1f3-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}“, So you might face some tough time in finding this command , Instead you can search for “Run” in the search and would be able to find it easily and same would be the case for “Computer” or “Recycle” and such sort of things but at the same time probably there might be some commands that may not be accessible from start screen ( as of now I don’t think there would be such command but in case) or you might want to add some other custom icon to the short cut command then go for the below method.
Method 2 : Creating Shortcut to Command Way
Step 1 : Create a Shortcut for the Command
1. Right Click on your desktop and select the shortcut option from the sub options of new menu.
2. It will ask you to enter the location of the item , At this screen you can browse for the location of the application or file you want to access or you can just enter the run command you want to access. For this example I want to pin wordpad to the taskbar and windows start screen as well. So the run command for wordpad is “write” , I am just going to type that here
3. In the next step it will ask you to enter the name for the command, You can give any name of your choice for the command you have created , in this example I am giving the name as “Wordpad“.
4. Once you click on finish, The Shortcut will be created with the run command that you have entered.
Step 2 : Assigning an Icon for the Shortcut
You can assign any icon for the shortcut that you have just created. For the above example system directly picked the icon that is associated with write command which is wordpad icon. That will not happen for the shortcuts with custom run commands. So here are the simple steps to create icons for the custom shortcuts.
1. Right click on the shortcut and select the properties option.
2. In the properties window you will find the change icon option , select that option.
3. It will bring up the change icon window, where you can browse for the icon files on your PC, In windows we have “C:WindowsSystem32shell32.dll” this file which includes many icons, Select one of the icon to change the icon of the shortcut.
3. How to pin this shortcut to start screen & How to Pin this shortcut to taskbar
It is very easy from now , Just right click on the shortcut file and chose the option to “Pin to Start” or “Pin to Taskbar” to pin it to start screen or the taskbar.
By default after pinning it to start screen it will go to the last position, Just drag it to the beginning.
