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I often ask clients to go to a command prompt.  Over half of them respond ‘Huh?’

The windows command prompt is often described as going to DOS.  But in reality it’s a way of interacting with Windows that isn’t a GUI(Graphical User Interface) as DOS isn’t a part of Windows anymore.

The GOOD thing about using a command prompt is that you don’t have to move your and from the keyboard to the mouse and back and you don’t have to wait for Windows to update a complex display when you do with some tasks.  Also there are just somethings that you HAVE to do on the command line (or are infinitely easier).

The downside is that you have to memorize commands (help is sketchy at times), you many not get the visual feedback (progress bars) you want, and you can do a LOT of damage with some commands.

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To get to a command prompt click on the Start Menu and then click Run.  Or hold the the windows and press R. You’ll get a little window called the Run Box that will have a place to type in things.  Below is the Window XP Run Window

Type in cmd and press Enter or Click OK.

This will bring up a black box that looks kinda like this. 

A few points of interest.

The C: is the current drive you’re in.  It’s usually C: but can be anything from A - Z

Next to that you have a \ (backslash) and then a > (greater than). Sometimes you’ll have some words and back slashes between them.  This is the folder that you are in.

To run something you just type in the command followed by pressing the enter key.  This tells the computer to read what you typed and execute it.

While I’m not going into detail on various commands in this post I’ll leave you with one.  Exit.  Type exit<enter> and you’ll exit the command prompt.  You can also close the window like you would most any other by clicking the X in the corner.

Stay tuned for other commands you can use in the Windows command prompt.