Question

easy way to remember DOS commands

Answer 1

If you are using Windows 3.x, there should be an icon in the "Main" folder for MSDOS Prompt. Click on it.

Windows 95/98: Start, Programs, MS-DOS Prompt. OR Start, Run, and type "COMMAND"

Windows NT/XP/2K: Start, Programs, MS-DOS Prompt. OR Start, Run, and type "CMD"

Now, a black window should appear with prompt like this: "C:\WINDOWS>". If you are using NT it will only say "C:\".
If the DOS window fills up the whole screen, type EXIT, then right-click on the MS-DOS Icon, click "Properties" and select the "Screen" tab, click on "Window" instead of "Full-screen", click on "Ok" and then reopen the DOS window.

Opening DOS in IBM's OS/2

If you are using the OS/2 platform, follow these instructions for opening a DOS session.

1. Open the "OS/2 System" folder.
2. Open the "Command Prompts" folder.
3. Click on the "DOS Window" icon.


Open a command line in NT/2x

Go to Start, Run, type "COMMAND". In previous versions this was done by entering CMD. In some versions of NT entering CMD may invoke previous versions of DOS. In some versions of WIN2x, CMD will open a command line with spaces in the directory name, COMMAND will open the window with the old 8 character limit.

NT/2x Directory System

NT uses user profiles. Each user will have different Desktop and My Documents folders under different names. There is no directory called "Windows", but there is one called "WINNT." Most NT system files will be found in C:\WINNT\System or C:\WINNT\System32. In some cases %SystemRoot% is used to address the system drive regardless of whether it is Windows or WINNT. 

The different user set-ups are in the C:\Documents and settings or C:\DOCUME~1. In this directory there will be a different folder for each user who accesses the machine. You may also see Administrator, Default User, All Users and some other funny virtual user folders. Each folder will have its own Desktop, Start Menu, My Documents, Cookies, Favorites and whatever directory structure the user has made beneath. Programs everyone access are usually found in C:\program files or C:\progra~1(same as Windows).

Hope this helps!