Solved Pin screensaver shortcut to taskbar?

[HairyScot]

Does anyone know of a failsafe method of getting round the Windows 7 restrictions on pinning screensaver shortcuts to tthe taskbar?

 

[cyclic]

I don't see a way of pinning it. Is a desktop shorcut no good ? even if you create keystrokes to engage.

 

[brianzion]

You can put a shortcut to a screensaver on Desktop, though.
Open Windows Explorer and navigate to Windows folder. Type
"*.scr" (without quotes) into Search Box on the top right and wait
until search is complete. Then right-click a screen saver on the
list, click Send to and then click Desktop (create shortcut).
Just double-click the new shortcut on Desktop to start the
screensaver.

 

[HairyScot]

Found a solution.

Created shortcut with Target set to
C:\Windows\explorer.exe "C:\Windows\System32\scrnsave.scr"

Was then able to pin shortcut to taskbar.

 

[brianzion]

cool will try this myself when i get home

 

[brianzion]

i tried it but it does not start my screen saver this command here brings my screen saver settings up C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL desk.cpl,,1

 

[HairyScot]

This works on my system.

 

[RJKinsman]

Excellent, thanks! Sevenforums is great!

 

[pxfragonard]

i tried it but it does not start my screen saver this command here brings my screen saver settings up C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL desk.cpl,,1

That one worked for me too. Thanks!

 

[AddRAM]

All the screensaver icons are in system32, couldn`t you just make a copy of the icon, put it on the desktop, then pin it to the taskbar ?

But, what`s the point :huh:

 

[Pyprohly]

All the screensaver icons are in system32. Couldn't you just make a copy of the icon, put it on the desktop, then pin it to the taskbar?

In a world where Windows would let you do so, that would be the easy answer, but currently, only file shortcuts are permitted on the taskbar.

If an application is placed onto the taskbar, it is translated into a shortcut. If a non-application is placed onto the taskbar, Windows will either track down the associated program for the that item and pin that instead, or it simply will not let you pin the item at all (i.e. no associated program was found or Microsoft blacklisted the program to be pinned (the case of .scr files perhaps?)).


There are hack-y ways to pin items to the taskbar that normally should not be.

During the creation of a shortcut, appending the word explorer in front of a filepath is a known Windows 7 trick that allows oneself to place the newly created shortcut onto the taskbar, regardless of whether or not the shortcut points to an application. This trick effectively allows the placement of any type of file onto the taskbar; most convenient for all your easy access needs. (You must, however, manually set the shortcut's icon. Almost most convenient there for a second )

HairyScot demonstrates this trick above with the solution he found himself.

It works because explorer (C:\Windows\explorer.exe) is an application that a shortcut is able to point to and the filepath will then be an argument that is passed to the explorer.exe application. Explorer just so happens to kindly invoke the file for you, provided that the path is valid of course.