Special Folders on Windows – or how to copy a program icon to desktop on Windows 8
2013
Have you ever had a problem of copying a program’s shortcut from the Program Menu to the desktop?
With Windows versions between NT and 7 absolutely no problem: open the start menu, select the item with a right mouse click and then select “Copy” from the context menu and “Paste” on the desktop.
With Windows 8 this is becoming very hard, unfortunately.
The Start Menu structure is here, but on the Start screen there is no possibility to copy the shortcut.
It is here:
c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu
Unfortunately, this folder is also hidden.
And since I don’t like to fiddle every time, I have created the small utility OpenSpecialFolders that gives you a list of most special folders on the system and let you open them in a new explorer window, so copying and pasting shortcuts is a lot easier.
You can download a zip file with the exe and a few runtime DLLs here:
I hope this will help someone!