Windows 10 Open command window here

NOTE (Sep 2019) - Some recent Windows update has broken the following instructions. The registry change no longer returns the missing context menu. If anyone knows of a simple low-risk fresh workaround, please let me know.

Before the most recent major update to Windows 10 you could shift + right-click in a blank part of the Windows Explorer file list and get a context menu "Open command window here". I've been using that feature dozens of times daily for a decade. The menu was recently replaced with "Open PowerShell window here".

PowerShell is certainly an advanced scripting language, but it has irritatingly different behaviour for someone who just wants to run a few dir or pkzip commands quickly in the folder that is currently selected in Windows Explorer. Many old commands and /switch combinations are invalid and have to be prefixed with cmd /c to work in the PowerShell window, which wastes time.

There are many articles on how to get the old menu back, but a lot of them are dangerous or overkill. One article led me to the simplest fix. In a nutshell, login at the real Administrator, not an elevated user and go here:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\cmd

1. Let local Administrator take ownership of the key, subkeys and values away from TrustedInstaller.
2. Give local Administrator Full Control of the key and subkeys.
3. Rename the DWORD value HideBasedOnVelocityId to ShowBasedOnVelocityId.

These are rather strange steps, but they seem to be the least worst or dangerous that work. I worry that step 1 might have side-effects, but I'll ignore that possibility for now because of the productivity benefit of getting the old menu back.

Orthogonal Programming