If you’re looking for a way to setup a shortcut to launch Media Center to a specific section or even directly into a plug-in such as Media Browser you’ll need to use a command line switch. These values can even be used in other program launching applications or with universal remotes like the Logitech Harmony.

To setup a Windows shortcut to launch directly Media Browser for example you would create a shortcut to “C:\Windows\ehome\ehshell.exe” and then insert the following command-line switch afterwards: “/entrypoint:{CE32C570-4BEC-4aeb-AD1D-CF47B91DE0B2}\{FC9ABCCC-36CB-47ac-8BAB-03E8EF5F6F22}”.

The values placed after “/entrypoint:” are the application identifier and the gui identifier numbers for the plug-in you wish to launch. You can find these values in the registry by launching “regedit” (start –> regedit –> enter) and browsing to:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Extensibility\Entry Points]

Here you will find a listing of GUI IDs, selecting each one should give you a clue to the application displayed on the right side. Most applications will include at least a title and an AppID which is the first number after the command-line switch. Simply enter “/entrypoint:{AppID}\{GUIID}” after the target of your shortcut and you’ll be all set.

There are also a number of other command-line switches available which you can use to launch directly into the default functions of Media Center as well as to help with the debugging process for plug-in developers. Take from MSDN here’s a complete list of switches:

ehshell.exe /entrypoint:{application_guid}\{entrypoint_guid}

This switch starts Windows Media Center and navigates directly to a registered entry point, where application_guid and entrypoint_guid are strings that contain the GUIDs of the application and entry point identifiers for the entry point to launch.

ehshell.exe /url:url

This switch starts Windows Media Center and navigates directly to a Hosted HTML application that is specified by url.

ehshell.exe /homepage:url

This switch starts Windows Media Center and navigates directly to a Windows Media Center Presentation Layer Web application that is specified by url.

ehshell.exe /addinfallbackpath:path

This switch starts Windows Media Center and uses the location specified in path to locate and load application assemblies. This location is only used after Windows Media Center attempts to load application assemblies from the global assembly cache (GAC) and \windows\ehome.

ehshell.exe /gdi

This switch starts Windows Media Center in Graphics Device Interface (GDI) graphics mode, which simulates a low-fidelity graphics environment that does not support DirectX graphics mode.

ehshell.exe /widescreen

This switch starts Windows Media Center with a 16:9 aspect ratio to enable testing widescreen display resolutions on systems that only have a 4:3 monitor installed. This switch works when Windows Media Center is started in windowed mode, but will not work in full-screen mode.

ehshell.exe /rtl

This switch starts Windows Media Center in right-to-left (RTL) display mode.

ehshell.exe /directmedia:general

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode.

ehshell.exe /directmedia:music

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode and navigates to the Music Library.

ehshell.exe /directmedia:video

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode and navigates to the Video Library.

ehshell.exe /directmedia:tv

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode and navigates to Recorded TV.

ehshell.exe /directmedia:pictures

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode and navigates to the Picture Library.

ehshell.exe /directmedia:discplayback

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode and begins playback of the disc in the drive according to AutoPlay registration.