The right-click button on your mouse can provide you with quick access to some great productivity functions within Windows. For example, when you installed an antivirus software, you can easily scan any suspicious file by simply right clicking on the file and select Scan. This saves you from manually launching the antivirus program and then locate the file to scan.
I found a collection of shell extensions that is useful to me and am sharing it out because it might be useful to you too. It also includes a very useful utility to fix any icons on your computer if it wrong/old icons are displayed.
Shell Tools is a collection of free Windows shell extensions and utilities. This package contains updated versions of their old shell extensions FontLoader, FileNote, RegisterEx, CopyURL and new ones, including nice control panel that allows you to control all the extensions in one place.
After you have installed Shell Tools, you need to open Shell Tools control panel to enable some functionality you want to use. By default all Shell Tools modules are disabled. That means after installing Shell Tools additional functionality in Windows will not be available until you enable some Shell Tools modules whose functionality you need. To open Shell Tools control panel, click Shell Tools shortcut from Start Menu > Programs > Moon Software.
Currently Shell Tools has 5 shell extension modules:
1. Copy Filename and Filenote – Copy filenames of selected items to the clipboard and allows you to add comments to files by creating text file that has the same name as selected file and opening it for editing in text editor (Notepad or another). If such text file already exists, it will be opened for editing.
2. Show Hidden Files command in folder background menu. This is a quick way to toggle global Windows Explorer’s Show Hidden Files option, that is otherwise buried deep inside folder options window.
3. FontLoader – Add Load/Unload/Install/Uninstall commands to context menu of font files (TrueType, OpenType and TrueType Collections supported). Windows Vista UAC is supported.
4. CopyURL – Copy different information from one or more selected favorites items (internet shortcuts) to the clipboard. You can customize the commands to make up your own copy strings.
5. RegisterServer – Will add Register Server and Unregister Server commands to context menu of DLL, OCX and EXE files that export DllLoadLibrary and DllUnloadLibrary functions, allowing you to register/unregister COM servers with ease, by right-clicking.
Other than shell extensions, Shell-Tools also comes with a very useful tool called “Fresh Icons“. Fresh Icons (FreshIcons.exe) is a tiny utility program to refresh icons in Start Menu/Desktop/Windows Explorer if wrong/old icons are displayed.
You may have noticed that sometimes when you change icon of a program shortcut, Windows still displays the old icon, even after restarting computer. Or when you change a program associated with a file type, associated files still display old program’s icon. That is because Windows caches program icons to improve performance – extracting icon from a program every time icon is drawn takes too much time, so they extract once, store it and then draw from stored cache. When you run Fresh Icons, it tries to send Windows a message that it should rebuild its icon cache and if that happens, usually old icons are discarded and you will see right icons magically appearing.
Useful to me, and I hope it’s useful to you too!