Adding the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt to your Explorer Context Menu at Reverse Alchemy

Adding the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt to your Explorer Context Menu

16 Comments Published by Erik Burger November 26th, 2008 in Programming

Recently I’ve been exploring the possibilities of MSBuild in my projects. MSBuild is a command-line tool so this involved spending a lot of time at the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt. And having to change directories every time I started a new instance really started getting on my nerves. So, Google to the rescue!

I found plenty of posts on the subject but none of them seemed to work for me. So, I modified the one I found here (thanks devsuldier!). Here are the steps to add the VS2008 Command Prompt to the context menu:

1. Using Notepad, create a file called “VS2008Cmd.reg”. Mind the extension!
2. Copy-paste the following lines into the file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 
 
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt]
@="Open VS2008 Command Prompt Here"
"Extended"=""
"NoWorkingDirectory"=""
 
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe /s /k \"cd \"%1\" && \"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat\"\" x86 "
 
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt]
@="Open VS2008 Command Prompt Here"
"Extended"=""
"NoWorkingDirectory"=""
 
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe /s /k \"cd \"%1\" && \"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat\"\" x86 "
 
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt]
@="Open VS2008 Command Prompt Here"
"Extended"=""
"NoWorkingDirectory"=""
 
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe /s /k \"cd \"%1\" && \"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat\"\" x86 "

3. Save the file. Double-click the file to add the entries to the registry.

Now, when you Shift+Right-Click on a folder you can select the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt. Sweet!

As a side-note, I ran into the problem that my current workplace resets the registry after rebooting. Annoying as hell, but luckily it’s not difficult to create a little startup script to add the entries to the registry every time I boot up:

1. Create a new file “AddVS2008Cmd.bat”. Again, mind the extension.
2. Copy-paste the following lines into the file:

@echo off
@echo -- Adding Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt to the Explorer Context Menu
regedit.exe /s "VS2008Cmd.reg"

3. Add a shortcut to the Startup folder. To do this, navigate to Start > All Programs, right-click on the Startup folder and select Explore All Users. Then drag the AddVS2008Cmd.bat file to that folder holding Alt key.
4. Set the shortcut to start minimized. This is purely aesthetics. Right-click on the shortcut, select Properties and change the Run property to Minimized.

Please note that the above paths are only applicable if you are running an English language OS and if you have installed VS to the default location. If you are either running an other language OS or have installed VS to a different location you’ll need to update the paths above. Thank you very much Fritz for pointing this out.

That’s all there is to it. I hope you’ll find this as much of a time-saver as I have.

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16 Responses to “Adding the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt to your Explorer Context Menu”

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1 Dan Jan 19th, 2009 at 8:10 pm

Sweet! Thanks man…
2 Gerardo Feb 4th, 2009 at 7:17 pm

Really cool. I can now run my build scripts in a snap.
3 Erik Burger Feb 5th, 2009 at 1:07 pm

@Dan: No problem. I hope it’s as much of a timesaver for you as it is for me.

@Gerardo: Exactly what I intended it for! Saves me tons of time

Regards,

Erik
4 sumant Jun 17th, 2009 at 6:09 pm

i recieve a msg “registry entry has been disabled bu the user administrator”…
it flashes for a second only
pl tell an optimal sol to it
5 Erik Burger Jun 17th, 2009 at 6:25 pm

Hi Sumant,

I’m afraid this means that you are not allowed to change the registry. Typically as a developer you are at least a local admin. The best solution I can offer you is to talk to your administrator about this.

Erik
6 Fritz Kreh Jan 29th, 2010 at 11:21 am

For non English windows installations, the path has to be adjusted (replace “program files” by local name). The same applies if VS is not installed to the default path.
7 Erik Burger Jan 29th, 2010 at 7:42 pm

You are absolutely right Fritz. I’ll update the post to include this note.

Regards,

Erik
8 James Aug 26th, 2010 at 9:22 pm

I followed this example on Windows XP but it doesn’t appear in the menu. Not sure what went wrong
9 Erik Burger Sep 20th, 2010 at 1:44 pm

Hi James,

It might be that the version of the Windows Registry Editor is different on Windows XP. Are the registry keys actually created? If not, you could try creating them by hand.

Best Regards,

Erik
10 vikas Gupta Feb 24th, 2011 at 7:54 pm

How to do Same with VS2010?
11 Dean Jul 17th, 2011 at 11:43 pm

To convert to VS2010 simply replace

VS2008 with VS2010
Visual Studio 9.0 with Visual Studio 10.0
12 bobby Aug 17th, 2011 at 12:25 pm

Thnks for this but it doesnt seem to work on windows 7 64bit.. ??
13 Erik Burger Aug 17th, 2011 at 12:33 pm

It might be that replacing \\Program Files\\ with \\Program Files (x86)\\ will do the trick for you. Just check whether the paths are correct.
14 Erik Burger Sep 9th, 2011 at 12:58 pm

Garret Thomson left the following remark.

Note that you probably want to add /D to the cd command, in order to make this work as intended on paths located on drives other than the Windows drive.

I couldn’t post to the blog entry as I’m behind a proxy at work.

Thanks Garret!
15 Thomas Hanks Sep 11th, 2011 at 4:56 am

From the above suggestions, this works on windows 7 on any drive

>>>>>>>>>> BEGIN .reg file >>>>>>>>>>
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt]
@=”Open VS2008 Command Prompt Here”
“Extended”=”"
“NoWorkingDirectory”=”"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt\command]
@=”C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe /s /k \”cd /D \”%1\” && \”C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\\VC\

\vcvarsall.bat\”\” x86 ”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt]
@=”Open VS2008 Command Prompt Here”
“Extended”=”"
“NoWorkingDirectory”=”"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt\command]
@=”C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe /s /k \”cd /D \”%1\” && \”C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\\VC\

\vcvarsall.bat\”\” x86 ”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt]
@=”Open VS2008 Command Prompt Here”
“Extended”=”"
“NoWorkingDirectory”=”"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\VS2008 Command Prompt\command]
@=”C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe /s /k \”cd /D \”%1\” && \”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0 (x86)\\VC\

\vcvarsall.bat\”\” x86 ”
<<<<<<<<<< END .reg file <<<<<<<<<<
16 Erik Burger Sep 11th, 2011 at 9:41 am

Thanks very much Thomas, great work.

Erik

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I am an independent .NET and SharePoint Developer living in The Netherlands. My main focus lies with C# and the .NET Framework.

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