I tried this several times and I cannot get it to work

Just another shortcut widget that seems to be very good but, again, couldn't make it work. Shortcuts are not opened.

shortcuts don't launch

I've experienced the same behavior as others have reported, with certain shortcuts failing to launch and others launching just fine. What what I can tell, the shortcuts that do not launch are all contained within the Windows PATH. For those unfamiliar, the Windows PATH is simply a list of directories that Windows stores in an environment variable. Many commands are programmed into the Windows operating system (dir, msconfig, etc), but for others, the command actually corresponds to an exe (o…r sometimes bat) file which resides somewhere on the filesystem. When you type a command from either 'Start- Run' or through a DOS command prompt, Windows uses PATH to locate where that exe/bat file corresponding to your command resides, assuming its not pre-programmed into the OS. This allows you to enter commands in a shorthand format (regedit, explorer, taskmgr, etc) without having to type out the entire directory path (C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe, C:\WINDOWS\regedit.exe, C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe, C:\WINDOWS\system32\taskmgr.exe). You can view the Windows PATH (or any environment variable) by right clicking on 'My Computer- properties- Advanced' and clicking the button labeled 'Environment Variables. You can also display it within a command prompt by typing "echo %PATH%"

Onto the solution.... From what I've found, the problem can be narrowed down to those shortcuts which point to a file residing within one of the Windows PATH directories. I discovered this when attempting to create a shortcut to the task manager (typically displayed when you type Ctrl+Alt+Del). I was able to get the shortcut to launch successfully by creating the same shortcut somewhere else, then creating the widget shortcut to there.

Example (shortcut to taskmngr):
Create a new folder under C:\. I labeled mine widget-shortcuts)
Inside, right click and choose New- Shortcut.
Browse to the full path and select the file (C:\WINDOWS\system32\taskmgr.exe)
Create the widget shortcut to C:\widget-shortcuts\taskmngr.exe

There were a few situations where this failed to fix the problem. For those situations I was able to fix it one of the two ways:
1- Rename the shortcuts for both shortcuts to something other than the original file name. It was causing a conflict with the real file when looking it up against the PATH.
2- If the above didn't work, and the endpoint file isn't too big, copy the file and paste it into C:\widget-shortcuts with a slightly different name than the original file. Then create the widget shortcut to the new file.

Good luck! More

I installed planning to use mainly for web URL's that I visit regularly. Web URL shortcuts will not launch.