12/8/2017 12 Useful Command Prompt Tricks You Should Know - Make Tech Easier

12 Useful Command Prompt Tricks You Should Know

 Fabio Buckell  20th Sep 2017

You may be reluctant to open the command prompt thinking that you have to enter complicated commands to
look for a le or run a program. The good news is that it is not as complicated as you think, and if you make good
use of it, it can make your life easier and better.

You may be surprised as to how short the commands actually are. The following tips will help you get various
things done with easy-to-remember commands.

1. Cipher Command
When you “erase” your les on a mechanical hard drive, they are still there until that space is overwritten with new
data. That can take some time, but with the command

cipher /w:c

random data is written over that space and make sure the les you deleted are really gone.

2. Managing Your IP Adress

Changing your IP address can come in handy for various reasons. If you need to change yours, type

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ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

The rst command will release your current IP address while the second command will get a new IP address for
your machine.

Flushing your computer’s DNS can be used when a site changes its IP address so you’re not taken in the wrong
direction. Type

ipconfig /flushdns

and enjoy that clean start.

Related: How to Easily Diagnose Connection Issues Using Traceroute in Windows

3. See If Packets Are Making It to a Speci c Device

With the ping command you can nd out if packets are being delivered to a device. Just type

ping URL

or

ping IP ADDRESS

(Replace the URL and IP ADDRESS in the command) and packets will be sent. If you get them back, you will know
everything is working just ne. If not, there is obviously something getting in the way.

4. Get Info on What a Command Means

This is a useful command if you’re just getting to know the command prompt. Type

COMMAND/?

Replace “COMMAND” with the exact command you want to learn more information about. For example, to nd
out what the command ipconfig does, enter

ipconfig/?

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The command prompt will show you the command and what it does.

5. Execute One Command Right After the Other

If there are various commands you need to enter, this tip can save you some time. Just type   &&   between the
commands and sit back and relax.

6. Scan and Repair Files

To scan and repair les on your computer, type

sfc /scannow

and hit Enter. The time this task will take will depend on how fast your computer is. This could easily take up to
an hour or so.

7. Manage Your Computer’s Energy

There are various things you can see on your computer with the powercfg   command. For example, by using the
command

powercfg /a

you can view your computer’s sleep states.

Powercfg can also let you do things such as:

powercfg /list   – Shows you all the power schemes in the current user’s environment

powercfg /energy – After observing your computer for 60 seconds it will create an HTML report with
data on how power ef cient your computer is.

powercfg /sleepstudy  – If your device supports InstantGo devices and applications, you can learn
which ones are waking up your computer by using this command.

powercfg /query – Returns a power setting subgroup GUID.

8. Assoc
Files are af liated with a certain program in Windows. When you open a program, certain les are opened
automatically. If you wish to associate these les with a program, you can use the   assoc command.

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By typing assoc  into the command prompt, you can see a list of program associations and le name
extensions. Let’s say that you want the text les to be associated with something else, type:

assoc.txt= "APPLICATION NAME"

(Replace “APPLICATION NAME” with the exact application name.)

9. Hide Folders
If there a folder that have sensitive information, you can hide it by using this simple command. Type the drive
where you have this le and then type

attrib +h +s +r

Then enter the name of the folder you want to hide.

10. Get a List of Your Computer’s Drivers

Find out if you ever installed that driver by using the driverquery command. Hit Enter once you’ve typed it and
you’ll see a list of every driver on your computer. You’ll see info such as Link date, Name, and Type.

11. Find Shared Folders

To see what folders you’ve shared, just type the command

net share

and press Enter. The command will also show you their shared names.

12. Run Commands as an Administrator

With this command you can run any command as an administrator even if the person using the computer doesn’t
have that privilege. Type

runas /user:yourdomain\administrator cmd

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and after make some changes.

Add your real domain name and substitute administrator with the actual user name of a Domain Administrator.
Change cmd with the command you want to try, and you can run as an administrator regardless of who’s logged
in.

Conclusion
With these commands, using the command prompt is going to get a lot easier. What tricks would you add to the
list? Leave a comment and let us know.

Is this article useful? Yes No

 
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2 comments
Ted
“systeminfo” is one I use a lot. It gets you OS build, original install date, manufacturermodel and boot time among
other things. I probably use it the most to get boot time if I think a server rebooted recently. I also use it to show
my boss that our critical nancial server were put into service in 2004.

“set” is another one I use often. It returns tons of info but I primarily use it for logon server to gure out which DC
authenticated the user when troubleshooting authentication issues. “set l” (the letter L) will give you just the
entries that start with L like logon server.

“whoami” is a quick way to nd out what account is logged in. I rarely used this until my current job which has a
bunch of trusted domains. The start menu might say “John Smith” but you can never assume it’s john Smith from
the parent domain. “whoami /groups” is a nice way to see the user’s groups from their PC.

Sep 21, 2017 at 10:02 am Reply

Shorty von Loehne

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Great article (and comment, thanks Ted). I’ve been working and tinkering with Linux for years, but I still learn
interesting and useful things from articles such as this. Thank you.

Sep 22, 2017 at 4:32 pm Reply

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