9 Windows Command Prompt Hacks: the power of black and white.

1. Copy/paste a file or folder to the Command Prompt: when you have to enter a command which involves a specific file/folder whose path or name is particularly lenghty or you simply don't want to enter it manually, you can drag and drop the file or folder to the Command Prompt to complete the command (Fig. 1) and then click Enter (Fig. 2).       

                    Fig. 2(Click to enlarge)                      

Fig.1

2.  Get help on how to use a command by entering the command name followed by a backslash and a question mark: you'll be shown the correct syntax and all of the available options that the command supports (e.g. help on DIR command, displayed by entering dir/? in the Command Prompt: Fig. 3).

   

   Fig. 3

3. Clear your Command Prompt window from previous inputs using CLS: CLS (Clear Screen) clears the previous commands you have entered in the Command Prompt. It may be helpful when you've entered a large number of commands, as you have to scroll the Command Prompt window all the way down to understand what was the last one you've run.
4. View your current TCP/IP configuration with ipconfig: I already talked about this command in my previous post.  Its most important option is /all which allows you to view and troubleshoot your current configuration (Fig. 4).

   

   Fig. 4 (click to enlarge)

5.  Display your operating system configuration for a local or remote machine with systeminfo: It lists hostname, operating system version, product ID, install date, boot time and hardware information along with which the installed hotfixes.  

   

   Fig. 5 (click to enlarge)

6.  Check if someone is hacking your PC with netstat: netstat is a fundamental command to understand what applications and hosts are connected to your computer and which ports are being used. It can be useful to understand if somebody's hacking your PC; for this purpose its most useful open option is Netstat – anb, which displays all the connections in numerical form and shows what application is using that specific port. Any open port will be displayed as LISTENING

   

   
   

7. Check and troubleshoot connectivity problems with Ping: Ping relies on ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) and sends 4 packets to a particular host to determine whether it's reachable or not .
8.  Track the path to a network using Tracert: tracert (fig. 6) is used to track the list of routers on a path to a network destination in a Windows environment (traceroute is the equivalent command for Linux and Mac).

   

   Fig. 6

9.  Handle advanced network configurations with Netsh: netsh is a very powerful command to configure interfaces, routing protocol, filters, routes and to display the configuration of a running router. It can be used for several functionalities such as enabling or disabling ping (ICMP echo requests) in Windows firewall or configuring your network card to get automatically an IP address from a DHCP server (Fig. 7).  

   

   Fig. 7