Put a Help and Support Center Shortcut on Your Desktop

By Stephen Bucaro

Windows XP's built-in Help and Support Center provides troubleshooters that work like wizards. They walk you through step-by-step to the solution to your problem. There's a troubleshooter for the Display, Hardware, Input Devices, Network, Printer, Sound, System Startup, and Shutdown and many more.

Before you make an expensive call to a computer repair service or Microsoft's Technical Support line, try Windows built-in troubleshooters. In many cases, Windows troubleshooters will help you diagnose and fix common system problems. You can access the Help and Support Center through the Start menu, but wouldn't it be handy to have a Help and Support shortcut right on your desktop?

To create a shortcut, left-click on an open area of the desktop, and in the popup menu that appears, select New > Shortcut. In the Create Shortcut dialog box that appears, enter the path shown below.

%SYSTEMROOT%\PCHealth\HelpCtr\Binaries\helpctr.exe

Then click on the [Next] button. On the second page of the dialog box enter a name for the shortcut, i.e. "Help Center". Then click on the [Finish] button. A shortcut to the Help and Support Center will appear. Now next time you have a problem with your computer, you'll remember to try a built-in troubleshooter first.

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