Set Windows Explorer Taskbar to My Computer without creating multiple occurrences of explorer.exe.

Hi Dan,

Follow the steps listed below:

a.    Right-click on the desktop and click “New” and “Shortcut”.

b.    Enter the following location in the “Type the location of the item” box and click “Next”.

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe shell:MyComputerFolder

c.    Type “Computer” under “Type a name for this shortcut” and click “Finish”.

d.    Right-click new “Computer” shortcut on the desktop and click “Properties”.

e.    Under the “Shortcut” tab, click the “Change Icon” button.

f.     In the "Look for icons..." line, type the following:

%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll

a.    Select the “Computer” icon from the available images and click “OK”.

b.    Click “OK”, “Apply” and “OK”.

Now, you may drag the new “Computer” shortcut onto the taskbar until you see the “Pin to Taskbar” pop-up and drop it.

The above method works perfectly without any spurious instances of “explorer.exe”.

Note: You can safely delete the “Computer” shortcut from the desktop.

Another alternative - Using a VBScript to launch My Computer folder.

Copy these lines to Notepad, and save the file as "MyComputer.vbs"

set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
objShell.ShellExecute "shell:MyComputerFolder", "", "", "open", 1

Create a shortcut to the script mentioning the full path, such as below:

C:\Windows\System32\wscript.exe "D:\MyScripts\MyComp.vbs"

Change the shortcut icon, and then Pin it to the Taskbar.

How is it a better alternative?

The script takes 3K memory (max) and duly terminates itself after launching the My Computer folder. This is better than the original situation where every explorer.exe instance taking 20+ K memory and not terminating automatically.