Creating a shortcut to the properties page of any network connection control panel item.

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So, for the technically inclined you might or might not know with the release of Windows Vista and 7 they made it much more difficult to access the Network Properties of each connection type located in the network connections control panel. This is a crazy work around, but hey I like things a certain way and having direct access to my configuration is important. You used to be able to right click on the network connection located near the system tray and select properties. This enabled you to check the status of the connection or disable it if need be. With Windows Vista and 7 the have hidden the connection properties under the advanced settings inside of the Network and Sharing Center. Its nice and all with the network map, but sometimes you need quick access to the primary connection to your network adapter in case you want to trouble shoot your connection. After many hours of searching I have found a work around and it requires some technical expertise.

You will need to be using regedit to find the GUID for the Network Connection Properties Panel and a program called BeTrayed to add Program shortcut for your network connection to your system tray that launches from the command line. Download it and install it. I had some problems installing it into the "Program Files" folder so you will either need to specify a different folder or create a "BeTrayed" Folder yourself and assign permissions to it.

Open up regedit and navigate to the follow key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\

You will have to search for the GUID that matches your NETWORK CONNECTION. It looks something like this: "{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\{2DB3ACD9-EE32-9136-AEFC-DA146A7BDD7B}\Connection"

The "Connection" Key Contains a string called "Name" that should contain the name of the connection you want to be able to create shortcut to on your system tray. I'm using "Local Area Connection" for this purpose. The GUID one level above the "Connection" subkey is the GUID of the network connection. Once you have obtained the proper GUID you will want to open up notepad or your favorite editor and past this line in:

"explorer.exe ::{7007ACC7-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E}\::{YOUR LOCAL AREA CONNECTION GUID}",Local Area Connection,14"

(Explorer.exe launches the GUID path, the commas separate the tooltip name of the shortcut in the system tray area, and the following number specifies what icon to use within explorer list of icons. I tried using an icon from from shell32.dll by following the BeTrayed instructions but i couldn't get it to work. I'm running Windows 7 64bit so i dont know if that is part of the problem.

Save it as "system.tray" inside of your "Betrayed" folder then create a shortcut on your desktop with this command: 

"<drive letter>:\<path>\betrayed\betrayed.exe /batch:system.tray" this will launch the shortcut icon and it should appear in the system tray. You can double click or right click on it and launch the shortcut which opens the connection properties.

That's it let me know if anyone has any problems.