Run a Command Prompt command from Desktop Shortcut

Question

Is it possible to create a desktop shortcut that, when pressed, will open command prompt and run a pre-defined command?

Answer 1

Create A Shortcut That Opens The Command Prompt & Runs A Command:

Yes! You can create a shortcut to cmd.exe with a command specified after it. Alternatively you could create a batch script, if your goal is just to have a clickable way to run commands.

Steps:

1. Right click on some empty space in Explorer, and in the context menu go to "New/Shortcut".

2. When prompted to enter a location put either:

"C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k your-command" This will run the command and keep (/k) the command prompt open after.

or

"C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c your-command" This will run the command and the close (/c) the command prompt.

Notes:

• Tested, and working on Windows 8 - Core X86-64 September 12 2014

• If you want to have more than one command, place an "&" symbol in between them. For example: "C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k command1 & command2".

Answer 2

Yes, make the shortcut's path

%comspec% /k <command> 

where

• %comspec% is the environment variable for cmd.exe's full path, equivalent to C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe on most (if not all) Windows installs
• /k keeps the window open after the command has run, this may be replaced with /c if you want the window to close once the command is finished running
• <command> is the command you wish to run