Introduction to the Windows Command Prompt. Introduction. Before Windows was created, the most common operating system that ran on IBM PC compatibles was DOS. DOS stands for Disk Operating System and was what you would use if you had started your computer much like you do today with Windows. The difference was that DOS was not a graphical operating system but rather purely textual. That meant in order to run programs or manipulate the operating system you had to manually type in commands. When Windows was first created it was actually a graphical user interface that was created in order to make using the DOS operating system easier for a novice user. As time went on and newer versions of Windows were developed DOS was finally phased out with Windows ME. Though the newer operating systems do not run on DOS, they do have something called the command prompt, which has a similar appearance to DOS. In this tutorial we will cover the basic commands and usage of the command prompt so that you feel comfortable in using this resource. Using the Command Prompt or Dos Window. When people refer to the command prompt they may we refer to it in different ways. A batch file is a text file, with BAT as the extension, that contains DOS commands. The operating system executes each of the commands in the batch file if they are. They may refer to it as a shell, console window, a command prompt, a cmd prompt, or even dos. In order to enter the command prompt you need to run a program that is dependent on your operating system. Below we list the programs that you need to run to enter a command prompt based on the version of Windows you are running. Operating System. Command. Notes. Windows 3. MEcommand. com. This program when run will open up a command prompt window providing a DOS shell. Dos Command Search Within File' title='Dos Command Search Within File' />In MSDOS 5. F.A. Premier Football Manager 2000. COMMAND. COM to load high, which requires an upper memory manager in CONFIG. SYS, like EMM386. Windows NT, 2. 00. XP, 2. 00. 3cmd. exe. This program will provide the native command prompt. What we call the command prompt. Windows NT, 2. 00. XP, 2. 00. 3command. This program will open up a emulated DOS shell for backwards compatibility. Only use if you must. To run these programs and start a command prompt you would do the following steps Step 1 Click on the Start Menu. Step 2 Click on the Run option. Step 3 Type the appropriate command in the Open field. For example if we are using Windows XP we would type cmd. Windowss Snipping tool can capture the screen, but sometimes I want to capture the screen after 5 seconds, such as taking an image being displayed by the webcam. Differences from previous versions. GRUB 2 is a rewrite of GRUB see History, although it shares many characteristics with the previous version, now known as. Step 4 Click on the OK button. After following these steps you will be presented with a window that look similar to Figure 1 below. Figure 1. Windows Command Prompt. The command prompt is simply a window that by default displays the current directory, or in windows term a folder, that you are in and has a blinking cursor ready for you to type your commands. For example in Figure 1 above you can see that it says C WINDOWS. The C WINDOWS is the prompt and it tells me that I am currently in the c windows directory. If I was in the directory c program filesdirectory the prompt would instead look like this C PROGRAM FILESDIRECTORY. To use the command prompt you would type in the commands and instructions you want and then press enter. In the next section we will discuss some useful commands and how to see all available built in commands for the command prompt. Useful commands. The command. Below I have outlined some of the more important commands and further instruction on how to find information on all the available commands. The Help command This command will list all the commands built into the command prompt. If you would like further information about a particular command you can type help commandname. For example help cd will give you more detailed information on a command. For all commands you can also type the command name followed by a For example, cd The Exit command This command will close the command prompt. Simply type exit and press enter and the command prompt will close. The CD command This command allows you to change your current directory or see what directory you are currently in. To use the CD command you would type cd directoryname and press enter. This would then change the directory you are currently in to the one specified. When using the cd command you must remember how paths work in Windows. A path to a file is always the root directory, which is symbolized by the symbol, followed by the directories underneath it. For example the file notepad. If you want to change to a directory that is currently in your current directory you do not need the full path, but can just type cd directoryname and press enter. For example if you are in a directory called c test, and there were three directories in that the test directory called A, B, and C, you could just type cd a and press enter. You would then be in the c testa. If on the other hand you wanted to change your directory to the c windowssystem. The DIR command This command will list the files and directories contained in your current directory, if used without an argument, or the directory you specify as an argument. To use the command you would just type dir and press enter and you will see a listing of the current files in the directory you are in, including information about their file sizes, date and time they were last written to. The command will also show how much space the files in the directory are using and the total amount of free disk space available on the current hard drive. If I typed dir test I would see the contents of the c test directory as shown in Figure 2 below. Figure 2. DIR of c test. If you examine the screen above you will see a listing of the directory. The first 2 columns are the date and time of the last write to that file. Followed by whether or not the particular entry is a directory or a file, then the size of the file, and finally the name of the file. You may have noticed that there are two directories named. The. stands for the current directory and the. In the example above,. Also note for many commands you can use the symbol which stands for wildcard. With this in mind, typing dir The Copy command This command allows you to copy files from one location to another. To use this command you would typecopy filetocopy copiedfile. For example if you have the file c testtest. If the copy is successful it will tell you so and give you back the prompt. If you are copying within the same directory you do not have to use the path. Here are some examples and what they would do copy test. Copies the test. txt file to a new file called test. Copies the test. txt file to the windows directory. Copies all the files in the current directory to the windows directory. The Move command This command allows you to move a file from one location to another. Examples are below move test. Moves the test. txt file to a new file renaming it to test. Moves the test. txt file to the windows directory. Moves all the files in the current directory to the windows directory. At this point you should use the help command to learn about the other available commands. Redirectors. Redirectors are an important part to using the command prompt as they allow you to manipulate how the output or input of a program is displayed or used. Redirectors are used by appending them to the end of a command followed by what you are redirecting to. For example dir dir. There are four redirectors that are used in a command prompt and they are discussed below This redirector will take the output of a program and store it in a file. If the file exists, it will be overwritten. If it does not exist it will create a new file. For example the command dir dir.