NirCmd - A small system utility program

The Story:

Hello friends..!! For the past few days I got quite addicted to programming. I planned to write a C program for controlling computer hardware. As I feel lazy to press the button for opening DVD drive, I thought of writing a program that will open/close DVD drive on execution. I browsed the internet for references and couldn't find what I needed exactly. But later I found a program 'nircmd' that can be used control the DVD drive. Nircmd is a small command line program that doesn't use any user interface. All is done by creating shortcut to it. It is also useful for various other purposes.

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How to use?

Download the file, copy nircmd.exe to 
'C:\Users\<USER-NAME>\bin' for Windows 7 users 
'C:\Documents and Settings\ <USER-NAME>\bin' for Windows XP users
If there is no 'bin' folder, create one.

 Then create a shortcut for opening DVD drive,

Enter the path C:\Users\<USER-NAME>\bin\nircmd.exe
Add this command line at the end " cdrom open <DVD-drive-letter>:"
So the path is, C:\Users\<USER-NAME>\bin\nircmd.exe cdrom open h:
'h:' is the drive letter for my DVD drive, the command 'open' will open the DVD drive. 

Then create another shortcut for closing the drive,
Enter the path C:\Users\<USER-NAME>\bin\nircmd.exe cdrom close h:
'close' command will close the DVD drive.

So, now there are two shortcuts. One for opening DVD drive and another for closing it. Lets assign a shortcut key so that we don't have to double-click the shortcut every time we need to open or close the drive.

Right click 'Open DVD drive' --> Properties. In shortcut key textbox, assign a key. I assigned F6.

Right click 'Close DVD drive' --> Properties. In shortcut key textbox, assign a key. I have assigned F7.

Thats it.. As simple as that :) Now when you hit F6 your DVD drive will open and when you hit F7 drive will close. No need to stretch your hand all the way to the button...

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I din't blog this to talk about creating shortcuts for opening or closing DVD drives. I wanted to spread the word about nircmd to people who don't know about it. Apart form controlling DVD drives, nircmd is also used to do various other stuff like

• Changing/Muting system volume,
• Writing/deleting keys in registry,
• Writing values into INI files, 
• Dial/connect to VPN,
• Restart/Logoff/Shutdown your computer,
• Creating a shortcut to a file,
• Created/modified date of a file
• Turning off the monitor,
• and many more...

all by using shortcut keys.. I hope this is useful to you people :)

Check out nirsoft.net for the commands

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Download:

From nirsoft.net:

nircmd for 32-bit     nircmd for 64-bit

Rapidshare link:

nircmd for 32-bit    nircmd for 64-bit

Visit nirsoft.net for more details,

I think this was useful.. Until Next Time, See Ya :)