A quick trip to your external hard drive photos

Maybe you’ve accumulated so many music and/or photo files you’re using an external hard drive to store them. And maybe you’ve created Desktop shortcuts by right clicking on the music and/or pictures folder on your external hard drive and clicking “Send to” and “Desktop” (create shortcut) to conveniently access your music and/or pictures folders on your external hard drive.
However, there may come a time when rather than Desktop shortcuts, you might prefer accessing your external hard drive’s music and/or pictures folders directly by clicking the “Music” and “Pictures” tabs on Vista’s Start Menu.

If this druthers tweaks your curiosity, I suggest you first create a Music and/or Pictures folder on your external hard drive and relocate all your music and/or pictures files and sub folders into the music and/or pictures folder you created.

Once you’ve accomplished this, changing the default settings for Vista’s Start Menu “Music” and “Pictures” tabs is as follows.

Note: Windows 7 has greatly improved and simplified this task. I’ll review it next week.

To Redirect Vista’s Start Menu “Music” tab:
Click on Start > right click on the “Music” tab > click “Properties” > click “Location” > click “Move” > click “Computer” > double click on your external hard drive > double click on your external hard drive “Music” folder > click “Select Folder” > click “Apply” > on the “Move Folder Panel” click “No” > click “OK”.

Now when click Start > Music you’ll go directly to your external hard drive’s Music folder

To Restore Vista’s Start Menu Music tab to it’s original default location:
Click on Start > right click on the “Music” tab > click “Properties” > click “Location” >
click “Restore Default” > click “Apply” > On the “Move Folder Panel” click “No” > click “OK”

To Redirect Vista’s Start Menu “Pictures” tab:
Using the steps above simply substitute “Pictures” for “Music”.

Now when click Start > Pictures you’ll go directly to your external hard drive’s “Pictures” folder

To Restore Vista’s Start Menu “Pictures” tab to it’s original default location:
Using the steps above simply substitute “Pictures” for “Music”.

Note: Redirecting Vista’s Start Menu “Music” and/or “Pictures” tab to your external hard drive does not change the location nor the content of Vista’s original “Music” and/or “Pictures” folder.

A heads up: Our 2010 User Group free, open to the public meetings beginning January 14th. They will as you might guess be dedicated to Windows 7.


Our User Group consulting technicians will be available to answer your questions and provide enlightening “walk abouts” of the new Windows 7 features.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.