Run a Command Prompt command from Desktop Shortcut

Philip Kirkbride picture Philip Kirkbride · Mar 16, 2012 · Viewed 289.2k times · Source

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

Answer

Robin Hood picture Robin Hood · Sep 12, 2014

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".