12 Brilliant Command Prompt (CMD)

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No matter how good Windows may evolve on the GUI front, Command Prompt was how it all began. So here are some great tips you can use to make yourself comfortable while working with the Command Prompt. like

1. Open Command Prompt in any Folder
2. Enable QuickEdit for Easy Copy/Paste
3.Make Undeletable, Unrenamable Folders
and 8 more amazing tricks using cmd..

1. Open Command Prompt in a Folder

When you open the command prompt, it opens up in either User or System folder depending upon whether you ran it as administrator or not. Now the thing is, if you want to execute a file in any particular folder, you would have to use the change directory(cd) command to navigate to the folder which can be a problem if the directory is nested way too deep.

To ease things you can open the folder in your windows explorer, hold Shift key when you right-click in the folder and select Run command window here to directly open the CMD prompt with the path to that folder directly.

2. Enable QuickEdit for Easy Copy/Paste

One thing I miss the most in Command Prompt is the ability to easily copy and paste text using the conventional Windows hotkeys. Normally, one would have to use the right-click context menu options to copy and paste text, but if you enable QuickEdit, you can do them using simple shortcuts.

To enable the QuickEdit mode, right-click on the Command Prompt Title Bar and select Properties. In the Properties Window under the Option Tab enable QuickEdit Mode. That’s all; you can now quickly select text by dragging your mouse pointer. Pressing the enter key on the selected text will copy the text to the clipboard and a simple left click would be enough to paste the text.

3. Run Command Prompt as Admin

Many commands require you to run command prompt as administrator. When you search for CMD in Start Menu, other than selecting Run as administrator from the right-click menu, you can simply press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open it with admin privileges. This trick will work for all the programs installed on your system.

4. See Command History

You can see last used commands in a session using the navigation buttons, but if you would like to see a list of all the commands, you can get it by pressing the F7 button.

Alternatively, you can use the command doskey /history to list these commands in the command prompt itself.

5. Change Command Prompt Looks

There are multiple ways of bringing up the customization window and each one has its own significance.

On any open instance, click on the control icon (top left of the window) and choose Properties.The changes here apply only to the current window. If you choose Defaults the settings would be saved for future instances except the current one.

If you wish to apply changes to a particular shortcut, right-click and bring up its Properties.Hence, the settings would apply only to that particular shortcut. This also means that you can apply different settings to different shortcuts.

There are things like window size, buffer size, color and font that can be modified easily. Let us check them out and understand the behavior associated with each one of them.

Window Layout and Size

I consider this to be the most important because it is really difficult to work on the default window (with very little height and width). The section for Window Size lets you define your own lengths for the window. Hit and try different values to make it exactly fit your screen.

Screen Buffer Size defines the amount of scrolling area you wish to have. It works as a wonderful adjustment for people requiring long sessions. It lets them scroll through and check things

I suggest that you check off Let system position window. That is what works best unless you need something very specific.

General Options

From the Options tab you may choose the Cursor Size and toggle between two Display Options (while on window view your layout settings will prevail).

More important things here are Command History and Edit Options.

Buffer Size represents the number of commands that that will be remembered and available with up/down arrows.
Number of Buffers denote the maximum number of independent buffers that will be created and available for multiple instances at the same time.
Check Discard Old Duplicates if you do not want the memory to be clogged with duplicate commands within the set buffer size.
Quick Edit Mode is great to use when you perform a lot of copy and paste operation.With this set checked, you can simply highlight the text to copy and right-click to paste.
Insert Mode lets you insert characters at the cursor location. Otherwise, the contrast is to strike off and overwrite the following characters.
Auto Complete shows up only in Defaults mode. When it is on, you can hit tab to complete file/ directory names easily.

Font and Color Options

These may not seem very important. But at work you should configure them to comfort your eyes and choose colors and fonts that suit you best.

You may change the font size (depending on how far you are seated from the monitor) and font type (depending on what you like).

When it comes to colors you should be wise enough to choose background and font color in proper contrast.

Note: While you make the changes, its preview will be available on the Window Preview. It gives you an approximation of your changes

6. Copy Commands Output to Clipboard Directly

Sometimes one might want to copy the output from a command to clipboard, like at times when you get an error, and you want to paste the exact error in email or while chatting with someone.

To store a command output to a clipboard add the command | clip at the end of the command. For e.g. Dir /p | clip

7. Drag and Drop Files to Change Path

If you are already in command prompt, and you want to copy the exact path to a folder or file to run the file or change the present working directory, you can simply drag and drop the file or the folder on the command prompt.

The path of the dropped file or folder will show up in quotes.

8. Run Commands Simultaneously

You can put && between two commands and execute them one after another. The command on the left will execute first followed by the command on the right of the double ampersand.

9. Get Help for Command

Well let’s say you know about a command, but you are not sure how it works. Not a problem, all you need to do is suffix the command with /? and execute it. If the command is valid, the command prompt will give you all the information related to it.

10. Watch Star Wars in ASCII

For all my nerdy friends who are diehard fans of Star Wars, you can actually watch the Star Wars Episode IV movie in the command prompt. Though it would be in ASCII, it will be fun. To start the movie, open command prompt, type in telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl. and press enter.

11. Make Undeletable, Unrenamable Folders

Click on Start.
Click on Run. Type in "cmd" without quotes.
In the Command Prompt Window that opens, type the name of the drive you wish to create your folder in the format <drive-name>: and press Enter. e.g. If you wish to create the undeletable folder in D drive, type "D:" without the quotes. Note that the folder cannot be created in the root of C:/ drive (if C: is your system drive).
Type this command- "md con\" or "md lpt1\" without the quotes and press Enter. You can choose any of the keywords given above as the name of your folder.

Now Windows will create an undeletable, unrenamable folder in the drive you entered in Step 3. However the folder can be renamed to another keyword using Windows Explorer.

Deleting the Folder

Although it is not possible to manually delete the folder, you can delete the folder by typing "rd con\" or "rd lpt1\" in Step 4 instead of "md con\" or "md lpt1\".

Windows Compatibility: This works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Try it yourself to create one such folder which can neither be deleted nor be renamed.

12.Know your IP address, DNS Server's address and a lot more about your Internet Connection

For Windows XP Users, there’s no need to select Run as Administrator, all you need to do is Click on Start and then Run and type cmd in the Open box and press enter.

For Windows Vista and Windows 7 Users, click on the Windows Start button and type cmd, right click cmd on the top and select Run Administrator.Command Prompt can even let you know your IP address. Just type ipconfig/ all in the command prompt and press Enter. Along with your IP address and DNS servers, command prompt will also return a ton of information like your host name, primary DNS suffix, node type, whether IP Routing ,Wins Proxy, and DHCP are enabled, your network adapter's description, your physical (MAC) address.

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