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If you have Windows 7, you probably fell in love with the new taskbar — nice big icons, lots of space to put your favorite programs, and so forth.

Having Windows Explorer pinned to your taskbar is pretty common, but when you click on it to open a new instance, you’re taken immediately to your Libraries folder. For some, this is nice, but it’s not ideal. Wouldn’t it be great to pin multiple locations to the icon? Wouldn’t it be great to change the default location?

You can!

Changing the default Windows Explorer location:

If you don’t want it to open straight to Libraries, here’s how you can change it to something else:

1. Hold down shift and right-click on the Windows Explorer icon in the taskbar. Make sure no windows are already open. A normal right-click menu should pop up.
2. Select “Properties” and go to the “Shortcut” tab.
3. In the “Target” option, change what’s entered to either of the following:
   • My Computer: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /e,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
   • My Documents: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n,::{450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103}
   • A folder of my choice (ie, “C:/”): %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n, /e, <Path to Folder>
4. Hit “OK”, and you’re done!

Pinning more items to Windows Explorer:

You can also add additional folders to the icon, if you like quick access to other folders in general. That way, you can right-click the Windows Explorer icon and quickly choose the folder without having to navigate to it.

Luckily, this is pretty easy: it’s a matter of dragging and dropping icons.

Say you want to pin your “Documents” folder to your icon. Here’s what you would do:

1. Go one folder above the one you want. In my example, I wanted “Documents”, so I would go one folder higher — my user folder.
2. Click on the icon you want and drag it down to the Windows Explorer taskbar icon. You should see “Pin to Taskbar” appear. Release. In my case, I click and drag on “Documents” and take it to the taskbar icon, and then let go!

You can drag other items as well, such as the links in your start menu to Music, Pictures, and so forth. Basically, you just drag and drop the folders you want and that’s it! You can reorganize or unpin them at any time.

Combined, these two features of Windows 7 can help make your computer usage a lot faster!