This method will work for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows Vista Users. A command-line user interface (CLI), also known as a console user interface, and character user interface (CUI), is a means of interacting with a computer program. Introduction to the Windows Command Prompt. Table of Contents. Introduction. Using the Command Prompt or Dos Window. Useful commands. Redirectors. Batch Files. Console Programs. Conclusion. 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.
However, it says “Access Denied” for all the files.-“access denied” please, help!*. Configure your PC to boot to Command Prompt by default. If you are using Command Prompt on a regular basis, you can have it so that your computer automatically. 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. 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. What we call the command prompt. Only use if you must. For example if we are using Windows XP we would type cmd. 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 files\directory the prompt would instead look like this: C: \PROGRAM FILES\DIRECTORY>. 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. 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 /? Simply type exit and press enter and the command prompt will close. 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: \test\a. If on the other hand you wanted to change your directory to the c: \windows\system. 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 . In the example above, . With this in mind, typing dir *. To use this command you would typecopy filetocopy copiedfile. For example if you have the file c: \test\test. 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. 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. 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. If dir. txt exists, it will overwrite it, otherwise it will create it.> >. This redirector will take the output of a program and store it in a file. If the file exists, the data will be appended to the current data in the file rather than overwriting it. If it does not exist it will create a new file. For example the command dir > > dir. If dir. txt does not exist, it will create the file first.<. This redirector will take the input for a program from a specified file. For example the date command expects input from a user. So if we had the command date < date. It will take the output of a program and pipe it into another program. For example dir . They are simply scripts that contain command prompt commands that will be executed in the order they are listed. To create a batch file, just make a file that ends in . Each command should be on its own line and in the order you would like them to execute. It has no real use but will give you an example of how a batch files works. This test batch file contains the following lines of text: cdcd \testdircd \. If I was to run the test. I created I would have output that looks like the following: Figure 3: Example of a batch file running. These are programs that are not graphical and can only be run properly from within a command prompt window. Just do a Google search on windows console programs. Conclusion. The command prompt can be a very powerful and versatile tool for a computer user. Hopefully this brief introduction into the command prompt will enable you to use your computer more efficiently. If you have any questions on how to use the command prompt, please do not hesitate to ask us in the computer help forums.- -Lawrence Abrams. Bleeping Computer Microsoft Basic Concepts Tutorial. Bleeping. Computer. Computer Support & Tutorials for the beginning computer user.
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