Windows operating system commands

The earliest versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system were really just applications that ran on top of the MS-DOS operating system. The command prompt allows Windows users to issue DOS commands to the system. DOS commands are useful to Windows users for a variety of reasons. You can configure the Command shell to automatically complete file and directory names on a computer or user session when a specified control character is pressed.

By default this control character is configured to be the tab key for both file and directory names, although they can be different. To change this control character, run regedit. Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making the following changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer.

Set these values to that of the control character you wish to use. See virtual key codes for a complete list. To disable a particular completion character in the registry, use the value for space 0x20 as it is not a valid control character. You can also enable or disable file and directory name completion per instance of a Command shell by running cmd. There are some CMD commands that are so useful and easy to use that even regular users see the Windows command prompt as a key part of the operating system.

Also, be sure to check out our YouTube video where we go over the commands listed in this article:. Your computer associates certain file extensions with certain programs. You can view all the file associations your computer knows about by typing ASSOC in the command window. You can set the association by typing something like assoc.

The FC command performs either an ascii or a binary file comparison and will list all of the differences that it finds. Using this command in the CMD command prompt returns detailed information about your current network adapter connection including:.

This information can help you troubleshoot router issues and other connection issues you could be having with your network adapter.

Running this command sends test packets over the network to the target system. PathName can indicate any directory on the desired volume. The command does not overwrite undeleted data, so you will not wipe out files you need by running this command. File compare: File compare or fc is a great command line tool that can be used to compare files to see if there are any content or binary code differences that you can access if you are using a PC.

It is a simple program that will compare the contents of text or binary files and is capable of comparing both ASCII and Unicode text. You can use this tool to display any lines from two files or two sets of files that do not match up with the others. Skip to content. Change Language.