Question of Knowledge

[12ozProphet]

Does anybody here have a well compiled list of commands for cmd that they dont really tell you about but are useful for *cough* my purposes?

[benthehutt]

I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I don't think there ARE any commands like that.  CMD is a much better "shell" (I guess it's a shell, though I've never heard it called that before) than command.com, but I've found it's still quite limited.

If your "purposes" are anything cool, download cygwin and have some fun learning bash.  It's like a linux emulator, but you won't have to worry that it'll mess up anything like a dual-boot *nix/Windows machine (somehow they sense each others presence and destroy each other).

As a former "Windows Only" biggot, it was hard to admit it to myself, but CMD can't do nearly as much as a *nix shell (like bash)

Anyway, here's Cygwin (quick, use bash before anyone tells you a different one to use):

http://www.cygwin.com

Install it.  Use it.  Learn it.

[Metgod]

They're just an interface for the user to communicate with the OS, so yes, cmd.exe and command.exe are shells (albiet, very limited compared to unix / linux shells) ...

[Tazinator]

Most of the things you do in the command shell on Windows is just calls to other command line executables based in the Windows and System32 directories basically. Just about all the old DOS commands are there, but if your using NT, 200 or XP your using a DOS emulator, its not really DOS so things may behave slightly different or not exist.

If your forced to use a Windows box but crave the ability to use Unix commands, you can always go this route...
http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
Hasnt been updated in a while but they still work.

[Cobra]

Or the www.cygwin.com approach

[wilnix]

hehe, yeah. Open a cmd prompt. type the following:

c: (just in case you arent on this drive)
cd \windows\system32
dir *.exe
check out all of those commands!
cool huh?

I think what might be in your best interest is to look at alll the cool tools you get from a resource kit. I am pretty sure you'll have fun there!

Wilnix

[Tazinator]

I second that, you'll get more nifty tools from downloaded resource kits for Windows 2000, 2003 or XP. They are technically "unsupported" by MS but 9 times out of 10 they allow you to do the stuff you are probably looking to do from the command prompt that the default setup just cant accomodate.

2000 Resource Kit Tools:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/default.mspx

2003 Resource Kit Tools:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en

XP Resource Kit Tools:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/e/c/8ec3a7d8-05b4-440a-a71e-ca3ee25fe057/rktools.exe (12.5MB)

And yes, just about all the these tools will work on 2000/XP/2003 with the exception of some Active Directory specific ones and such.