Shortcuts

On Microsoft Windows based machines, you can do many things very quickly using Windows Key.
Windows + ‘l’ - Locks the system
Windows + ‘e’ - Opens the explorer window
Windows + ‘m’ - minimizes all the windows…… but wait you might want to use rather the next one.
Windows + ‘d’ - Shows the desktop. Windows + ‘d’ brings up all the windows again.
Windows + break - Opens System properties window. Here you set the environment variables.
Windows + ‘TAB’- It is much much cooler version of ALT + TAB.
My favorite : Windows + ‘r’ - Opens the “Run” window.
In the Run window, you can type any application executable name and it opens for you. For example,
“notepad” - opens Notepad
“winword” - opens Micorsoft Word
“msdev” / “devenv” - opens Visual Studio.
In windows, shortcuts created for application act as soft links to the binary file. So every time I install a program into my system, I
create a shortcut to its binary executable and rename the shortcut to a single letter such as ‘n’ for Micorsoft OneNote.
move the shortcut to a common location such as “C:\vipin\install\”
add this common location to “PATH” environment variable.
………………………… and now Windows + ‘r’ opens “Run” window for me and typing ‘n’ in Run window opens the “Microsoft OneNote” for me. !!!
I must add that with #7, I have impressed many people in my office. It takes less than 2 seconds to open an application and people ask “whoa !! what did you just do to open that application..
Some non Windows key based one are :
CTRL + SHIFT + ESC : Opens the task manager. For the times when you want to kill unresponsive Chrome / Firefox web pages.