I'm new to the board, so I don't know if this is posted before, but the most usefull shortcut of all time, is a restart button, right on the desktop.
here's the target;
shutdown -r -t 0
I'm in the registry alot, so I found that target to make another shortcut;
C:\WINDOWS\regedit.exe
I also use the system restore as my registry backupso I found the target to put that on my desktop also;
%SystemRoot%\System32\restore\rstrui.exe
I love device manager on my desktop, target %windir%\system32\mmc.exe c:\windows\system32\devmgmt.msc
now, this is my first computor, it's xp, and I don't know if these are the same targets for all ms os's