Explorer - skip to drive letter?

[ChrisGreaves]

When the left-hand ("folder ") pane is active, tapping the letter "W" sends me to the next visible (i.e. parent folder is expanded) folder that starts with the letter "W".

Is there a way to use a single keystroke to jump to a drive letter?

Ideally for me the drive W: would be treated just like a folder, because I have used SUBST to map drive letters to common folders (thus W: is synonymous with "T:\Greaves\Admin\Domains\" a.k.a. my Web pages). That is, if there were some way to have Windows jump to folders and drives starting with the letter I'd be delirious ...

[HansV]

Eileen's Lounge wouldn't want to be responsible for one of its members being delirious...

[John Gray]

I'm afraid I regard the use of SUBST in much the same way as the Computed GOTO in Fortran, and as did Niklaus Worth/Edsger Dijkstra in their "GOTO statement considered harmful" for Basic, so I would not wish to perpetuate its use.

Why don't you use shares, and NET USE x: \\PCname\sharename instead?

And anyway you should be using xplorer² instead of Windows Explorer (you will be ever so grateful when you migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7!)

[Leif]

Go to Administrative Tools > Disk Management...

What are your drives named? If you select Properties, you can name them anything (reasonable) you want. So for example, Drive C: can be "1", Drive D: can be "2" etc, and hitting '1' in Explorer should make you jump to the root of C:, hitting '2' the root of d: etc.

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[ChrisGreaves]

Go to Administrative Tools > Disk Management... If you select Properties, you can name them anything (reasonable) you want.

Thanks Leif.
On my system it appears possible to rename my C: drive to be CDrive, but not possible to rename any of the SUBSTituted drives.
I essayed too in Explorer.

[Leif]

The next best thing then may be Handy Folders - Fast and Direct access to your folders.

[ChrisGreaves]

Why don't you use shares, and NET USE x: \\PCname\sharename instead?

Because up until now none of my su-peer-iors told me to!
But thank you for the shove!
I have used Net Share in my boot-up sequence. My "Fakes.bat" (attached) is a legacy from my XT days.

The command

Code: Select all

SUBST W: "%Drive%\Greaves\Admin\Domains"

is replaced with

Code: Select all

net use W: \\Laptop\LapT\Greaves\Admin\Domains /persistent:no

This works, but I now wonder whether you can nudge me over the edge and get rid of the pesky description "Domains on 'Laptop\LapT\Greaves\Admin'", bearing in mind that I really want it to say "Webpages"?

(Later) I rebooted and found I'd partially-solved my problem. I rebooted because I tried to rename the NET USE mapped drive from "Domains on 'Laptop\LapT\Greaves\Admin'" to "Webpages", found that worked, couldn't Undo the rename, so rebooted. Argh! the name has STUCK so now I don't HAVE that problem; but I'm sure it will come back.

The new command "net use W: \\Laptop\LapT\Greaves\Admin\Domains /persistent:no" when first used produced a name "Domains on 'Laptop\LapT\Greaves\Admin'", where Laptop is the computer name and LapT is the share drive name.

(later still) Let's keep this post just for the record; no need to reply yet. I've waded through a few web pages on the use of Net Use (where I found Persistent) and may yet come to understand what I'm doing.

[John Gray]

I'm not quite sure where you're getting that "Domains on" message from, so I will simply say that /persistent:no may be abbreviated as /p:n, and similarly with yes -> y ...

[ChrisGreaves]

I'm not quite sure where you're getting that "Domains on" message from,

Thanks John.
Me neither!
I'm going to run with it for a few days and see what happens.
I reboot first thing each morning, and occasionally during the work day.
I also do registry cleans etc., so in the normal run of events a reboot never knows what might hit it!
Right now it is set up perfectly for me, and a "W" takes me straight to drive W:

I can, of course, start by gingerly replacing the SUBST statements one by one; that will give me fresh pastures to gambol in. Or gamble, as the case may be ....

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