Windows Command List (Windows CMD) with Description and Examples

Where is the command line located?

The main command line file is the console cmd.exe translating user commands into an understandable system view, is located in the folder with the installed OS along the path: <буква_системного_диска>: WINDOWS system32 cmd.exe

How to start / open / call the command line?

These methods of launching the command line are relevant for all versions, including those that I consider on my site - windows XP, 7, 8

1) Start - All programs - Accessories - Command line

2) Start - Run - enter cmd.exe

3) keyboard shortcut Win + R - enter cmd

4) Launch from the system folder: <буква_системного_диска>: WINDOWS system32 cmd.exe

In order to run command prompt as administrator, 1 and 4 methods are suitable, you need to click RMB on the shortcut and select "Run as Administrator" in the menu.

Commands / Options / Command Line Keys .
You can learn command line commands directly in it by typing help and pressing the Enter key (after you finish entering all the commands you need to use Enter (ENTER)).

I will not go too deeply, because for this it is better to write a separate article. I will give only a small command line example.
Suppose I have folder 123 on drive E, and in it is the text file test.txt.
Now I want to make this file hidden without going to this drive and not "seeing" this file with the folder.
The team responsible for the "System" attribute is attrib. And she has her own attributes (already teams). You can even look at the screenshot above, I showed it there on an example.
Of all its attributes, I need only two - this is its setting and the attribute itself. Responsible for this + and s.
So my command will be as follows: attrib + s e: /123/test.txt. This is how the correct result will look:

Oh. I just noticed that instead of Hidden, I made it System, and I wonder why it did not disappear in the folder. I specifically did not begin to remove screenshots and edit the article in order to show you how to correct such a mistake (as I did). Good information too.

And finally:
How to edit text in a command window?
The fact is that standard methods using the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V on the command line do not work.
Here you need to use RMB - Right Mouse Button.
In order to paste text on command line, just click RMB anywhere on the command line, then select Embed.

In order to copy some text from the command line You can use one of two methods:
1) RMB - Select All
All text will stand out, but you can immediately select whatever you want, just as usual holding down LMB
2) RMB - Flag
A blinking cursor will appear at the beginning of the line, which can be controlled by the "arrows" on the keyboard. And when the shift button is pressed, select the text, controlling the “arrows” on the keyboard as well. Or select again with the mouse.

if you wish, you can change command line settingsby selecting the menu item above "Properties"

Other Windows Command Line Resources:

Windows command line setup. - How to change the background color, character color, size and location of the command line window. Copy and paste text in the console window. How to configure the addition of file and directory names when typing at the command line. Using function keys.

Working with the Windows command line - The basic techniques used when working on the Windows command line.

Windows batch files - General principles for using environment variables in batch files. Processing command line options. The use of labels, transitions and cyclic data processing. Practical examples of solving system administration tasks.

Launching applications as administrator without UAC request - How to start an application or batch file from a batch file without prompting for UAC UAC

Work with the network on the command line. - A detailed description of the CMD Windows commands for working with the network and examples of their use.

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How to run the command line

In Windows 10, it’s not immediately obvious to find the command line, so read this article about the different ways to launch the console in this OS.

There are several ways to run a command line on a Windows operating system, here are the simplest ones:

• From the "Start" menu, go to "Programs" ("All Programs"), and then to "Tools" (in Windows 7 - "Accessories"), select the application "Command Prompt".
• In the search field, enter “cmd” (without quotation marks), the command line will appear among the opened results.
• After pressing “Win” + “R” on the keyboard, in the “Run” window, enter the command to launch the command line “cmd” (without quotes).

In normal mode, the command line is run on behalf of the user. To perform certain actions on the command line, elevated computer administrator privileges are required. In this case, the command line must be run as administrator. Read the article on how to run the command line as administrator in different versions of the Windows operating system.

How to run a command on the command line

Work on the command line is very simple: the user enters a text command, and then presses the Enter key. If you need to enter several consecutive commands, repeat this operation several times.

After starting the command line, the version of the Windows operating system and the place where the user is currently located are displayed in the window of the command line interpreter. When started in normal mode, this is the address of the user profile on the system drive.

When you run the command line as administrator, the path is as follows: "C: Windows system32".

Windows command line commands must be entered in the interpreter window immediately after the ">" sign, at which point the cursor blinks.

To copy a command from a computer, and then paste the command into the command line, use the context menu of the right mouse button. Copy the command to the clipboard, paste the mouse cursor into the command window, click the right mouse button. Windows 10 supports copying and pasting using standard keyboard keys: “Ctrl” + “C” and “Ctrl” + “V”.

Some system applications start immediately after entering a command that consists of the name of the application, for example, if you run the calc command, the system program Calculator will start on the computer.

For other programs, you will need to enter the full path to the application executable. If there are spaces in the path to the file, the full path is enclosed in quotation marks, for example, the command to launch the Google Chrome browser looks like this:

After starting a command from the command line, the implementation of the command execution is not always externally noticeable, due to the fact that there are internal changes in the operating system.

Other parameters, keys for performing specific actions, are often added to the main command.

If you enter the wrong command, for example, the one entered with errors, or if the Windows operating system cannot run the command for any reason, a message will appear in the command line interface window.

Windows Command Line Commands

The user can independently learn the basic commands from the Command Line utility itself. To do this, just enter the command: "help".

The command line interface displays a list of basic commands.

To get information about the parameters of an individual command, you need to enter one of the following commands that are executed the same way (do not forget to put a space):

As a result, you will get information about all the parameters of this command.

Windows Command Prompt: List of Basic Commands

Check out the table that summarizes the commands used on the Windows command line. If I missed any important command, write about it in the comments to this article, I add the command to the table.

Conclusions of the article

The command line in the Windows operating system allows the user to control the computer without using a graphical interface. To perform certain actions on a PC, you must enter special commands into the command line interpreter. This article has published a table with a list of the most requested commands for the Windows command line.

Основные команды командной строки

DIR — сокращение от Directory , эта CMD команда для новичка выводит список всех файлов и папок в определенном каталоге. А также их размер, расширение и свободное пространство, оставшееся на диске. The command can be changed using additional parameters, such as DIR / p (displays a list of pages), DIR / q (displays information about the site owner), DIR / w (displays a list in an extended format with a maximum number of files in one line), DIR / d (displays the list in an expanded format, divided by columns), DIR / n (displays a long list in one line), DIR / l (displays an unsorted list of directory names and file names in lower case), DIR / b (displays a list of files without additional information). DIR / s lists the files and directories of this directory, as well as all subdirectories. By entering DIR /? , you will see a list of all available options.

The CD or CHDIR (Change Directory) command is intended to change the directory. The team performs several operations. The CD takes you to the very top of the directory tree. CD .. moves you to the parent directory relative to the current one. CD directory_name moves you to this directory. Enter a CD to display the name of the current directory.

MD or MKDIR (Make Directory) allows you to create a directory (folder). To create a directory, use the following syntax: MD directory_name.

CLS clears the screen. This CMD command on Windows is used if the command line emulator is populated with a list of commands and their operations.

EDIT file-name allows you to modify the contents of a file.

The DEL command allows you to delete one or more files. Alternatively, you can use the ERASE command. Use the DEL filename syntax to delete a file.

If you want to delete all files with a specific extension, then enter DEL * .doc, and all files with the doc extension will be deleted from the current directory. DEL *. * Deletes all files from the current directory, so be careful with this command.

RD or RMDIR - you can use this command to delete a folder, but the folder should be empty. The syntax is pretty simple. Enter RD FolderName. If you want to delete a folder that is not empty, you can use RD / S folder_name. Be careful with this command, as it deletes the folder and all its contents without recovery.

RENAME, or REN renames a file or directory. The syntax for this computer control CMD command is: RENAME current-name new-name. For example, if you want to rename a file named iPhone.txt to iPad.txt, enter RENAME iPhone.txt iPad.txt.

MOVE allows you to move one or more files from one directory to another. For example, if you want to move the 1.txt file located in the current directory to a folder named Numericals inside the current directory, enter MOVE 1.txt Numericals.
If you tried to rename a directory (folder) using the RENAME command in the above way, then you know that this does not work. The MOVE team will help us with this, as it can also be used to rename directories. Enter MOVE current-name new-name, where the current name is the name of the directory in the current folder.

The COPY command allows you to copy one or more files from one place to another. The command allows you to combine files of the same type. Let's look at various examples of using the COPY command:

• COPY file-name folder-name will copy file file-name to an existing folder,
• COPY file-name new-file-name creates a copy of the file with a new name,
• COPY * .doc Word copies all files with the extension .doc to a folder named Word.

The CMD XCOPY main command is for files and directories, including subdirectories. The easiest way to use it is to copy all files from one drive to another. Syntax: XCOPY Source-drive: Destination-drive: / e, where the / e option allows you to copy all subdirectories, even if they are empty. Use / s to prevent copying empty directories. You can use the folder names of the source or destination drive to simply copy the entire contents of one folder to another.

Additional teams

The FORMAT command in CMD allows you to erase information from the hard drive or prepare it for copying data if you installed a new disk. The syntax for using the command is: FORMAT drive:. If you want to reformat a particular drive to a specific file system, you can do this with the command: FORMAT drive: / FS: file-system, where file-system can be: FAT, FAT32 or NTFS. After applying the command, all data from the disk will be erased without a trace.

FC - used to compare two files with each other. Suppose you have two files gadgets360_1.txt and gadgets360_2.txt. To compare them, you need to enter the following command: FC gadgets360_1.txt gadgets360_2.txt.

IPCONFIG displays detailed information about network settings: the IP address, and also reports the type of network connection of your computer (using Wi-Fi or Ethernet). Enter IPCONFIG / ALL to get an overview of all network settings, including which DNS servers you are using. Enter IPCONFIG / RENEW to get the new IP address from the DHCP server. This can help if you are having problems connecting to the internet.

CMD ping command - if you are not sure if the site you want to visit is available, enter PING followed by an IP address or domain name. For example, PING google.com. If Destination Net Unreachable appears on the screen, you may not have an internet connection. If Host is down or Request timeout messages appear, the site may not be available. If everything is ok, you should see something similar to this: 64 bytes from 173.194.36.73: icmp_seq = 0 ttl = 56 time = 118.355 ms.

The SHUTDOWN command may come in handy if the Shut Down button on the Start menu does not work due to malware. To shut down the computer (for Windows), enter Shutdown / S. To restart the computer - Shutdown / R.

CHKDSK - CMD command is used to check if your operating system can read the hard drive or any other media correctly. Command syntax: CHKDSK C: - replace C with the drive letter you want to check. Enter CHKDKS /? to see other options.

This publication is a translation of the article "CMD Commands Every Windows User Must Know", prepared by the friendly team of the project Internet technology.ru