I'm kind of a shortcut nut - and the constant looking for stsadm utility has been driven me nuts.  You can't create a shortcut directly to it.  And once you do get past, "where is it again... common?", I keep finding myself asking "what was that command again?".  So, I decided to rid myself of these two common issues I keep having.

  1. Create a shortcut on your desktop to cmd.exe (it's here: %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe)
  2. Right-Click on the shortcut and select Properties so you can go edit them (our stuff is on Shortcut Tab)
  3. Change the Target to: %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe /K stsadm.exe -help
  4. Change the Start in to: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\"
  5. Click Change Icon, and browse to stsadm to select it: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\stsadm.exe
  6. Click OK until all of your windows are closed.
  7. Rename your shortcut to stsadm

There you go!  You now have a fake shortcut to stsadm.  When it initially runs, it will display all of the available operations for you (just need to scroll up).

- Dan