Cool things to do in cmd.exe

[studavis]

have been messing about with cmd.exe here in the past few days and have noticed some cool tools - such things as tracert, ping and netstat - just wondered what else this could do to reveal other cool stuff?

[Anthony.S]

Dir, ftp and a million other things. Your the post-DOS generation I presume ;)

[studavis]

i had seen dir before, and used dos briefly when starting out....

[CarlP]

:lol:

DOS is an OS (or rather it was, it's just emulated in newer Windows), so you can do pretty much anything you can do in Windows if you know the command.

Best thing you can do is change the display on HP printers to say 'Insert Coin(s)'. :p

[Xenomorph]

Hmm...

f.. o.. r.. m.. a..

No I can't do it.

[xraystan]

Fdisk /mbr hours of fun with that one. :thumbs:

[BaggyDave]

hehe evil ;) but fun

[belly]

type help and you get a list of the available commands. ipconfig/all gives some useful info, netstat can be useful also.

[damell]

net send computername/ip "message"

The receiving computer must have messenger (nothing to do with windows/msn messenger) service enabled.

[DB2k]

damn i feel old!!

ok try this:
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

and watch the show (you'll need to be online)!

[the_edge30]

:lol:

DOS is an OS (or rather it was, it's just emulated in newer Windows), so you can do pretty much anything you can do in Windows if you know the command.

Best thing you can do is change the display on HP printers to say 'Insert Coin(s)'. :p

How do you do this, all your HP printers are network ones, so is this still possible?

Chris

[bonsaiguy]

DB2k that is very cool! Didn't know you could do that through telnet. Have seen the animation before but never via the wonders of telnet!

[D.E.]

How do you do this, all your HP printers are network ones, so is this still possible?
http://www.thedvdforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=301003

[allan]

It's funny to see people who didn't grow up with DOS try and use computers nowadays. I still think people should have DOS before being allowed to use Windows they can see how it worked. What versions did people start with? I had 3.3 first, not bad but a bit limited, namely 32meg maximum partition size, no emm386 (as far as i can remember).

[PAZ]

DOS?? Can't be doing with these new fangled OS's - give me CPM anytime.
And Assembler programming of course. Aaaahhh, those were the days (goes misty eyed).

[stunno]

I started with 3.1 then moved onto 3.3 which was much better. Next I upgraded to 4, then back to 3.3 because everything had stopped working properly! Then onto 4.01 IIRC and 5, quickly followed by a brief dalliance with DRDOS 6 (or was it 5?) with the disk compression! Eeeh how I laughed when it trashed my Masters thesis the night I before it was to be handed in!

I still quite miss DOS, at least when it all went tits up with dos/win3.1 you had a good shot at being able to repair it, whereas now it tends to be a format and reinstall at the drop of a hat

[blobberTHEjobber]

The best bells and whistles command is almost certainly:

rmdir c: /s /q

Mind blowing.

[HaloMan]

One of the best "unknown" commands in Command Prompt and DOS is subst. It substitutes a folder name for a drive letter, so you can make c:\temp into t: as far as Windows is concerned. :)

[Vex]

I think the best unknown command has to be the autotest switch for the format command...
DO NOT TRY THIS!
format c: /autotest

[ShaneC]

Echo Y|del. is always good for a larf. Used to have fun changing the prompt, PROMPT=You are located at $P and its $T on the $D $G. I remember using DOS 2.x but did most of my time with Dos 3.2. MS-DOS 5 was the daddy, Didn't Jonathon Ross launch it, like who would have a clue :)

[ShaneC]

I think the best unknown command has to be the autotest switch for the format command...
DO NOT TRY THIS!
format c: /autotest

Blimey, DO NOT TRY THIS ONE

FORMAT /AUTOTEST :
FORMAT /AUTOTEST checks for the existing format of your disk, unless the /U (UNCONDITIONAL) parameter is also used, and then proceeds with an UNATTENDED DISK(ETTE) FORMAT:

DOES NOT prompt for a volume label!
DOES NOT prompt to format another disk(ette)!
NO delay: NO user intervention!
Ends WITHOUT pausing!
After completion, it DOES display disk space statistics.


:nuts:

[Vex]

Oh, yeah.. Forgot the /U... It's been a while since I used it... :)

Edit: Some of the more malicious viri used to stick this command into your autoexec.bat file... So on reboot, bye, bye, everything...

[Karl]

One of the best "unknown" commands in Command Prompt and DOS is subst. It substitutes a folder name for a drive letter, so you can make c:\temp into t: as far as Windows is concerned. :)

Came in very handy the other day after spending a couple of hours trying to get a USB floppy disk to install as A: on a laptop. Kept insisting that it was E: no matter what I did but the software it was needed for would only write to A: and the person whose laptop it was had 'lost' the swappable drive :brickwall

[bob_bob]

copy con c:\test.txt
pathping
time
date
type filename.ext
cls
ver
sys

all good stuff

[ShaneC]

bob_bob - liking that pathping command, not seen that one before :thumbs:

[IAmATeaf]

copy con c:\test.txt
pathping
time
date
type filename.ext
cls
ver
sys

all good stuff

Don't forget to do a CONTROL-Z after issuing the copy con.... command :)

[carlito8]

O.k, I was marvelling at the star wars one and thought I try this one as posted above, now my docs, favourites, cookies etc... are all gone. Any chance of getting them back ?

rmdir c: /s /q (Don't do it btw....)

[GreyJackal]

deltree c:\windows

always seemed to be very satisfying :D

[kohoutec]

deltree c:\windows

always seemed to be very satisfying :D

Dont do it Carlito8! btw if you were being serious a system restore should sort you out

[carlito8]

Dont do it Carlito8! btw if you were being serious a system restore should sort you out

Tried doing a system restore to no avail, all docs are still missing :(

Looks like I'll be starting again with a lot of databases and excel sheets.......