Friday, December 30, 2011

Adding MSC to executable extensions

http://superuser.com/questions/228680/on-windows-what-filename-extensions-denote-an-executable

After two decades, I finally got tired of it, tired of typing .MSC after "compmgmt", after "dsa", and especially after "services". I mean, "services" actually works, but bails right away, leaving you with a hope that nothing actually took place just now.

It turns out there's an environment variable called "PATHEXT" that stores all these "executable" extensions. It can be set per command window, or can be set for all future windows in the registry at
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment

Not sure if adding .MSC to the front is a good thing. Time will tell. At least "services" works like I want.