You may have noticed I like customizing the appearance of my computer; and I l o v e tweaking my computer. I equate it to the fun I used to have fooling around with a 55 Chevy back in the "olden days". So it shouldn't come as a surprise that todays article falls in that genre.

Some of this article will be discussing registry changes and its a good idea to back up the registry before playing with it. On the Registry menu, click Export Registry File. Browse to a location to store the exported file, and then type a name for the new file.

Whenever you are in either Windows(98) explorer mode you can right click on a file or folder and the menu that pops up is called the context menu. You can add items you want to these menus or delete items left over by programs you have long since deleted. For instance you can make Notepad appear as a permanent item in the menu.This will enable you to right click on any file and have the option to open it with notepad.

Just do the following:

Run 'regedit.exe'
Expand "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT"
Inside "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT", expand "*"
Inside "*", create a key called "shell"
Inside "shell" create a key called "open"
Inside "open" edit the string "(default)" to say "open (notepad)"
Inside "open" create a key called "command"
Inside "command" edit the string "(default)" to say "C:\WINDOWS\NOTEPAD.EXE %1"
The next two sections are lifted from information provided at:

Win98 Annoyances

Customize Context Menus

For file icons:

Select Options from the View menu in My Computer or Explorer, and click the File Types tab.
Highlight the desired file type, and click Edit.
Here, you can specify a new name for this file type (to be listed in the type column in Explorer), as well as the default icon for files of this type.
In the box entitled Actions, is a list of the customizable context menu items. The bold item is the default (the action carried out when you double-click on a file of this type).
You can add new items, change the default action, and remove unwanted items here. For new items, simply specify the program with which you want the action carried out. Lastly, you can check Enable QuickView to show the QuickView action in the context menu.

For folder icons:

Run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE).
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ Directory\ shell.
Select New from the Edit menu, and then select Key.
Here, type the name of the new item you want added to the list, and press Enter.
Highlight the new key, select New from the Edit menu, and then select Key again.
Type command for the name of this new key, and press Enter.
Double-click on the (default) value in the right pane, and type the full path and filename of the application you want associated with this entry.
Close the Registry Editor when finished.

I.E. Explorer also has a right click context menu; should you find left over items in the menu from deleted programs you can get rid of them by using your Registry Editor:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Internet Explorer\MenuExt ...remove any obsolete items.

And finally remember that the Send To menu is simply a directory on your hard disk (usually C:\Windows\SendTo). Just drag-drop any folders, programs, or drive icons into this folder to add their shortcuts to the Send To menu.

If you drag a shortcut for the Send To folder into the Send To folder itself, it makes it easy to add new objects later on!

March 05, 2001 Some of you folks are like me and like to do things the easy way; the easy way to play with context menus is to use a freeware program I just found out about after I had written and posted this article. You can down Context Editor and play to your hearts content. It works on Windows 9x, NT, 2000, or Me.