Do you have many Instant Messengers like MSN, ICQ, Google Talk, Skype, Xfire and so on and are annoyed of starting each one manually? Then I show you a trick to start them all with just one click. This will of course work for every bunch of programs you like!

Follow the instructions to create a small batch script that starts all your programs automatically:

• Go to any folder you don’t access that often like “C:\” or “C:\Documents and Settings”, right-click and select New -> Text Document.
• Make sure your Explorer doesn’t hide file extensions and rename the text file you created to “messengerstart.cmd” or something with “.cmd” in the end.
• Right-click the file and select “Edit”. This will open the file in Notepad.
• For each program you want to start, add this line to the document:
  start “” “<path to your program executable>”
  and replace the <path…> stuff with the actual path. You can get this path either by right-clicking the shortcut of the application, selecting “Properties” and copying the text in the “Target” field or by searching the application. Usually it is in “C:\Program Files\<Application name>\<Application name>.exe”
  
• When all the applications are there, save the file. Now it is working already, but we want to have it in our quicklaunch bar.
• Right-click  the file and select “Create Shortcut”. Rename this shortcut to something like “Start all messengers” and drag it to your quicklaunch bar.
• If you don’t like the ugly logo, right-click the shortcut, select “Properties” and click the “Change Icon…” button at the bottom. In the window popping up you can either select one of the default Windows icons or browse to an application and use this icon.
• Now you may delete all the shortcuts you replaced with the new one in your quicklaunch bar.

If nothing went wrong, you will have a  shortcut like this now that starts all your applications with one click: