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Useful DOS Commands For Computer

Technicians 
October 9, 2007 by Bryce Whitty
Computer Business Kit

0 0 3

Microsoft Windows hasn’t natively used DOS since the days of Windows98. However, for a computer technician DOS
commands are still very useful even in the XP and Vista environment.

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For many techies this stuff is old hat and is mainly for the younger generation, however the old hats may see some
commands that they didn’t know about. By no means is this exhaustive list of DOS commands are there are thousands
more (Google them if you need them). This list has commands that are particularly useful to technicians repairing
computers. Latest Posts

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ipconfig – Windows IP Configuration
This has to the DOS command I use most today. ipconfig will tell you the IP settings for the current computer such as what
your current IP is and what subnet/gateway you are on. It is great for troubleshooting. Here are the two most useful
How To Collect
commands for ipconfig and usage: Payments At Time of
ipconfig /release– This will release any IP information that the computer was given and make your IP address Service
0.0.0.0
ipconfig /renew– This will ask any DHCP servers (usually your modem/router) for a new IP address.
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ping – Check a connection or computer With Free Computer
Ping is used to check the health of a connection. The ping command will tell you whether a network device is responding Repair
and how fast it is running. The ping tool can also be used to convert a web address into an IP (eg. www.google.com =
74.125.19.99). Usage:
ping www.google.com– Pings a webserver to see if it can be reached or is responding. I personally use this to see if Tech’s Guide to Pay-
the computer I am on can reach the internet. Per-Click Advertising
ping 192.168.0.1– Pings a local address, often a modem, router or another computer. with Rachel Logan

netstat – Displays current TCP/IP connections

netstat– Will display what connections are currently active on the system. Useful for spotting programs calling back to How to Approach
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base such as spyware.
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type – Open texts files
Similar to Unix’s cat command, this command will display the contents of a text file in DOS as read-only. Usage:
type c:\sometextfile.txt

attrib – Make hidden files visible

Attrib can change the attributes of a file, such as whether its a system file or its hidden. This is especially useful to
technicians because critical files such as the boot.ini is a hidden system file: SUBSCRIBE
attrib -H c:\boot.ini– To unhide the boot.ini
attrib -S c:\boot.ini– To make remove its system file attribute TO THE
For more options with this command, type attrib /?
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find – Advanced file search
The find command is a very powerful one with many options such as the ability to search for something, but exclude
certain files. The following command will find all files with .pdf in their name on C:\ iTunes RSS
dir c:\ /s /b | find ".pdf"
For more information in this command and its usage, type find /?

move – Move files

Normal usage of the move command would be:
move file.txt c:\TextFiles\
However, you can also use it to move only certain files. For example, if I wanted to get all the PDF’s out of a folder and

move them to another location, but leave all other file types alone, I would do:
move *.pdf c:\WorkPDFs\ JOIN 26,000+
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tree – View the tree structure SUBSCRIBERS
Type treeto see the folder and file structure of the folder you are currently in. You can also use this command to make
prints of the directory structure by sending the information to a text file with the following command tree >
textfile.txt

System

systeminfo – Displays information about the system


systeinfo– Will display information about the system such as the name, version, uptime, specifications and patches See All Posts
installed.

tasklist / taskkill – Shows what programs are running on the computer and can kill them
tasklist– Will display all the processes running and their memory usage.
taskkill– Will kill a process. Usage would be: taskkill firefox.exe

sfc – Launches Windows’ system file checker utility

sfc /scannow– This command will start scanning your computer for any damaged or missing windows system files.
Useful to run after a virus, adware or spyware attack has damaged core files. Have an XP CD handy for this one.

chkdsk – Can check a disk and attempt to recover data in bad sectors.
chkdsk /f /r– This will check a disk for errors and try and fixes information from bad sectors
chkdsk /x– Forces the volume to dismount first.

For further information/usage on any of these commands, you can bring up the help for each one of them by typing:
command /?

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Comments

Vitiated says

October 11, 2007 at 6:00 pm

“net use” is a command I use almost daily to map drives in CLI

Syntax:

net use drive_letter_to_map server_location

Example:

net use K: \\server\share

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Remote Computer Repair says

October 12, 2007 at 6:51 pm

A little intimidating at first look… but now, I use dos (batch files) every day. Just makes life a lot easier. :)

Virgil says

December 23, 2007 at 11:58 am

Old School……
For the REAL techs out there.

dave says

July 12, 2008 at 4:44 pm

I like these alot:

netsh winsock reset – reset the Winsock catalog

net view – list available network devices

shutdown /r /t:00 – restart the computer

xcopy /e /c /h /y – copy all files in this and all subdirectories, create subs if they don’t exist even if they’re
empty, don’t stop on errors, copy system and hidden files, and don’t confirm file copy/replace. Useful when
the GUI lets you down (and impressive to watch – the computer looks really busy!)
See xcopy/? for more…

Ramkumar.S says

August 26, 2008 at 2:47 am

i need the networking tips

chuck says

March 13, 2009 at 12:25 pm

Nice ones dave; but don’t forget the /f on the shutdown command to force shutdown. Helps out alot when
you get errors or processes that don’t want to die and you need to restart the machine.

EX:

shutdown /r /f /t 0

shaggy says

August 31, 2009 at 8:22 am

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i wont dos commends

vishal says

September 12, 2009 at 1:07 am

her is one for you shaggy

CLS

Joe says

November 21, 2009 at 7:27 am

needing to find the AT commands for a Agere modem driver ver 2.1.87.0…to change compression by
hardware – right now have settings with common commmand ATFX to combine fast speed command. need
this asap. it’s MS+ something…I need the command string to for manual compression by 2-10% on dial up.
Is there software just for hardware compression? Also, does anyone know the best software for dial up
speed increases?

Naveed says

November 25, 2009 at 11:17 pm

Very useful commands listed in this site.

Thanks,
Naveed

mayank says

May 20, 2010 at 6:47 am

i wanan create batch file for shutdown my computer

by running that batch file system should be shutdown

pls reply

amin says

August 23, 2010 at 6:04 pm

i have a problem please anyone help…

in my company i have 2 computers which is connected with wireless network. in this network i want to send
files to another computer with dos command. anyone can guide me.please
aminind2003@yahoo.co.in

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lokesh siddha says

November 13, 2010 at 1:13 am

write the following line in notepad:

shutdown -s -f -t

and save any where any name but remember the extension name must be .bat

(here we use -s -f -t because of this reason pc shutdown’s at that time immediately)

you may also set this by using or setting time period….

my email id is: lsiddha84@gmail.com

shodan says

December 22, 2010 at 10:17 pm

Very useful commands traks

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