It surprises me that many people do not know about <CTRL> and <SHIFT> when dragging files around their systems. For those of you who still do not know, dragging + <CTRL> results in a copy of files to wherever you drop them and dragging + <SHIFT> moves the files to wherever you drop them. These conditions applied to Windows 9x family and Windows NT family up to and including XP. I haven't included Vista because these conditions do not always work. Drag + <SHIFT> sometimes only leaves copies, and sometimes will not do anything at all. 

I haven't  always moved files around in this way,  preferring the old Windows 95 'send to' function when using only one monitor. Since having two, I set up each folder, one on each monitor, and drag away. That was the theory anyway. To be honest, if files were vital, I always copied, then afterwards deleted from the original location, as 'moving' sometimes resulted in total loss if the computer locked out and had to be rebooted, for instance.

So why am I moving so many files around?

Apart from this blog, I have two others, and I compile bits of text and pictures into the default Vista documents folder, and after I have used all of the stuff, I then move the pictures et al to another folder on a separate drive for storage purposes. In this way, I am not looking through hundreds of items for stuff I want to use. 

I needed a reliable way to copy or move files around, and after some searching, I found this web site.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/89196-context-menu-add-copy-folder-move-folder.html

The link just about says it all, and a visit there will reveal the steps necessary to add context sensitive 'copy' and 'move' functions to the right click menus. The instructions come complete with screen shots of what you will encounter during the set up, and it works on all Vista flavors.    

One more item before I sign this off.

Drag + <CTRL> or <SHIFT> work well if you want to copy or move a start menu item to your desktop or 'Quick Launch' toolbar. Click once on a Start Menu item, and then use either function to place the icon.