How to find all shortcuts to a file/application?

findstr /ism notepad.exe \*.lnk

findstr.exe comes bundled with Windows since XP if not earlier. It lives in c:\windows\system32.

• /i specifies case-insensitive search
• /s specifies recursive search descending into subfolders
• /m specifies 'display only the file name when matches are found'. Without this option, findstr will spit out a bunch of ascii-translated binary garbage

notepad.exe is the target of the shortcut, replace with the actual executable you're interested in.

\*.lnk gets implicitly split into two parts: "\" specifying the root of the search, and "*.lnk" specifying the files to search.

Open the start menu/button, and enter: type: *.lnk in the search/run field at the bottom. Click "see more results" in blue, now just above that.

A new explorer window will open. Change the file-view to "Detailed".

Right-click the "title"bars for each category, and add "Link target" to the fields shown (you will likely need to click "more" and find it in the alphabetical list)

Now click on the Link target "title"bar to sort by Link target, and find all your windows-shortcut-files that point to your target file.

This should show all variations of command-line flags, since you're sorting alphabetically by target path.