MS-DOS
MicroSoft Disk Operating System
This is just a brief overview of a few commands that can be used in MS-DOS. It is good to be familiar with all of these. In any case, further information on any command can be found by typing [command] /? or [command] –help from the command line, which can be accessed by clicking on the start menu, going to the “Run” dialogue, and typing cmd.exe or command.com and hitting enter.
MS-DOS commands can be run in Windows through command prompt by using the run option by typing in cmd.
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Command, Explanation
net, This command allows a user to perform any networking function that the windows user interface is capable of. It has a variety of options and should be inspected more thoroughly
shutdown, This system-level process enables a user or administrator to shut down a computer remotely or locally with different options and different notification settings. When the host shuts down the shutdown is initiated by “NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM”
attrib, This command line utility is used to set file attributes and permissions settings.
at, This command is used to schedule tasks for the computer to perform automatically. When this utility is used to execute an application the application is owned by “NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM”.
ipconfig, This command is used to configure networking. Using ipconfig /release will release the current IP address while using ipconfig /renew will renew the current IP address. ipconfig /all can be used to view full network configuration settings including DHCP servers and DNS servers.
netstat, This command is used to view all network connections and has a variety of options.
ping, This is a network connectivity and troubleshooting utility. This utility is used to verify connectivity between two machines and rates connectivity speed by latency or the amount of time it takes to send a signal to the remote machine and for the same signal to return to the local machine.
nslookup, This command is used to look up the IP address of a remote host.
tracert, This command will trace the network route from the local machine to the remote host specifying latency for each hop between the local host and the remote host. This command has a variety of options.
finger, This command will show all users logged into a local or remote host assuming the finger service is running on the target machine.
nbtstat, This command can be used to access the NetBIOS table on a remote or local machine. The output will contain the NetBIOS name and all available shares.
telnet, This command can be used to manually craft a TCP/IP connection from the local machine to a remote machine. This command does not come in Windows Vista’s MS-DOS version.
copy, Copies a file
xcopy, Moves a file
del, Deletes a file
deltree, Deletes a directory
cd, Changes working directories
ftp, An FTP client
dir, Displays directory listings
prompt, Sets a new prompt reverts to old prompt or toggles prompt on or off
echo, Prints the text in the command line
edit, Edits a file
arp, Controls the Address Resolution Protocol table and cache
cacls, Sets permissions settings per user to the registry and alters group policy
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