Most people prefer using Shortcuts on their desktop or scrummaging through the Start Menu to find programs. But when shortcuts go missing, or finding programs in the Start Menu becomes a lesson in patience, perhaps it’s time to change how you search for your programs.

The Run Box is a very useful tool, and learning how to take advantage of it will make your life a little easier.

When launching a program using the Run Box, more often than not, all you need to know is the actual name of the program. For example, to launch Firefox you would do the following:

1. Click Start -> Click Run
2. Type Firefox -> press Enter (Voila Firefox will Launch)

If you are an Internet Explorer user do the following:

1. Click Start -> Click Run
2. Type iexplore -> press Enter (Voila Internet Explorer will launch)

Notice that to launch Firefox all we needed to do was type firefox, whereas with internet explorer we needed to type iexplore. The reason is that Internet Explorer is actually called iexplore.exe where as Firefox is called firefox.exe.

The point is, as long as you know the name of the program, it will launch. More often than not, programs usually have easy names to remember.

You can also use the Run Box for other things as well. For example:

To open up a folder, like the C:\ drive,  Type  C:\ Press Enter in the Run Box and hit Enter and the folder will launch.

To launch a web page like ebcak, type www.ebcak.com and Enter. Ebcak.com will launch in your default browser.

That’s it for now!