Introduction to CMD
CMD is an acronym for Command. Command prompt or CMD is the command line interpreter of Windows operating systems. It is similar to Command.com used in DOS and Windows 9x systems where it is called as “MS-DOS Prompt”. It is analogous to Unix Shells used on Unix like system. The command prompt is a native application of the Windows operating system and gives the user an option to perform operations using commands.
Command prompt makes use of the command line interface to interact with the User. In the Windows operating system, this command prompt interface is implemented through the Win32 console. User can open the interface by via the CMD run command or by going to its original location C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe.
Understanding CMD
With the command shell, you can have direct interaction with the operating system. Think command prompt as an interpreter which accepts the commands or the inputs from the User and translate it into machine language. These commands are predefined and perform a specific task. These commands can be clubbed together as well to perform a series of task. Also, these commands need not be entered manually and can be written in a batch file to automate some of the manual tasks like taking a scheduled server backup, deleting junk files and so on. These commands are very handy at the time of network troubleshooting or for a day to day work. These commands can be called from many programming languages such as Java which allows the programmer to perform task directly via the command prompt which otherwise would take several lines of code to be written essentially to perform the same task.
Windows Command and Usage
Let’s see some of the useful windows commands and their usage
| Command | Description |
| Ping | If you want to test the network connectivity between two systems say source and destination then you can use the ping command. It sends an ICMP or Internet Control Message Protocol to the destination system and waits for the response in the form of packets. |
| Netstat | It displays the active TCP connections, ports on which the system is currently listening. |
| Ipconfig | Ipconfig is one of the most used commands. It displays network configuration values like current TCP/IP. It also allows you to refresh the Domain Name System and Dynamic Host Configurations. |
| PathPing | PathPing is used to determine the network issues in any router or subnets. If there is any packet loss in between the multiple hops between a source and the destination system PathPing can determine and display results based on the packets returned from individual routers or subnets. |
| Tracert | Tracert command traces the path of the destination system from which it receives the packets of information as a response. |
| append | Append is similar to the Path command of MS-DOS. It allows you to access the files present in a different directory as if it is present in the current directory. |
| getMac | This command comes handy if you want to know the physical address or the mac address of the system. It can also determine the address for the remote systems. |
| diskcopy | As the name suggests it allows the programmer to copy the contents of one floppy disk into other. |
| dir | Dir indeed is the most useful command out of all. It let you populate all the files and subfolders that are present inside a folder. |
| driverquery | It enables the administrator to display a list of installed device drivers and their properties. |
| tasklist | With tasklist, you can check all the processes that are currently running either in local desktop or in a remote machine. |
| cipher | If there is a requirement to alter the encryption or to display the existing encryption strategy cipher can be used. |
| PRN jobs | It adds, deletes and lists printer driver. |
| change | It changes the remote desktop session host server settings for logons, COM port mapping and installs mode. |
| NSLookup | Nslookup displays the information which can be used to diagnose the DNS or domain name system infrastructure. The nslookup command will only work if you have installed the TCP/IP protocol. |
| Taskkill | To kill any active tasks or process that appears on the task manager can be killed with the help of this command. It makes use of process ID to kill the tasks. |
| mstsc | With mstsc, you can establish a connection with a remote desktop from your local system. |
| rdpsign | With rdpsign, User can digitally sign an rdp file present on a remote desktop. |
| shadow | With shadow, one can have access to the remote desktop session remotely. |
| tscon | With tscon, one can connect to another session on a remote system. |
| tskill | Like taskkill commands which kills or remove the currently running processes or task in the local desktop tskill kill the processor tasks in a remote desktop. |
| nfsadmin | It manages the server for NFS and client for NFS |
| nfsstat | It displays or reset counts of calls made to the server for NFS |
| rpcinfo | It list programs on remote computers. |
How to access CMD?
To access the command prompt irrespective of what version you are using follow the below steps. One of the quickest ways to access the command prompt is to make use of Run Window. To open the run window press the windows key + R on your keyboard. once you do that run window will open and then write cmd and press enter.
As soon as you press ok command prompt window will get open up.
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To run the command prompt in the administration mode, type cmd in the search bar present in the taskbar, then right click on cmd. You will see an option Run as administration click ok and then command prompt will open in the admin mode.
Conclusion
We have seen some useful windows command that comes handy when working on a remote desktop or a server. These commands can be grouped together to perform a series of tasks in a sequential order to automate some of the redundant tasks. Windows command can be used to interact with the Network File System (NFS), remote desktop services, windows server, and external and internal peripherals.
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