Windows keyboard shortcut force always open new window

Question

I have a shortcut on my desktop for a command that runs cmd.exe /k <myscript.cmd>. I assigned it the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Alt+R.

This works to open one window, but the problem is that pressing the shortcut a second time switches focus to the window that's already open. I would like a new window to be created each time I press the shortcut instead of switching focus to the existing window.

Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

Change your shortcut to

start myscript.cmd

From the Microsoft Documentation: The start command will start a separate Command Prompt window to run a specified program or command.

---

If your command name contains space(s) (e.g., C:\Program Files\mystuff\myscript.cmd), you need to put it into quotes, of course.  Because of a quirk in the user interface design for the start command, if you do this, you need to provide another quoted string first.  This is intended to set the title of the new window, so you could say,

start "This is mine!" "C:\Program Files\mystuff\myscript.cmd"

or you can just leave it blank:

start "" "C:\Program Files\mystuff\myscript.cmd"

Answer 2

The exact shortcut target reads:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "start myscript.cmd arg1 arg2"

It did not work with quotes around the "myscript.cmd...".