What is/was your favourite DOS command?

[ekbh]

DOS, as in Disk Operating System, remember those bygone days when you actually had to type stuff and have a basic knowledge of computers to do anything? Before the dark times, before Windows.

Mine was always "cls". Nothing more satisfying than a fresh clean screen to type on.

[edDV]

I liked and miss RENAME or REN with wildcards

REN [drive:][path][directoryname1 | filename1] [directoryname2 | filename2]

[teegee420]

FDISK. I love getting new hard drives.

[redwudz]

'FDISK' as I seemed to do a lot of reformatting and reinstalling of the OS when I used W95 and W98. I do still have a 'DOS for Dummies' book laying about somewhere. Here's a reference of DOS commands for the uninitiated: http://www.computerhope.com/msdos.htm#02

And who could forget the DOS T-shirt:

Well, most of us. I never had one, BTW.

And since this is computer related, moving it to the Computer Forum.

[Faustus]

FDISK for sure, it makes partitions so tidy and solves so many software issues.

Also less hardware errors with an empty hard drive...

[ROF]

Another vote of Fdisk here with CD\ being a close second.

[JerryB]

DOS, as in Disk Operating System, remember those bygone days when you actually had to type stuff and have a basic knowledge of computers to do anything? Before the dark times, before Windows.

Mine was always "cls". Nothing more satisfying than a fresh clean screen to type on.

hi,
well first those command lines Os's (msdos, dr.novel, ibmdos, etc) be surprised how many of those systems people still use....

favorites commands, well serveral,, such as dir, dir>name.txt, or tree, xcopy and diskcopy ..
yo can get around on the hard drive a lot easier and do a lot more than yo can within a windows environment.... the only real thing i didn't like about winxp and ntfs was i could really use my old norton commander... it was fastastic..... far superior than windows explorer...

[Ai Haibara]

Okay, how about 'mode'? Nothing like making all your text blink or appear in PCjr resolution to make things interesting (for other people, anyway) :P

Hmm... I haven't really thought about what DOS command would be my favorite. If it was the one I used the most, it would be 'dir', but that can't be my favorite.

[yoda313]

xcopy

I had made a simple batch file to overwite my dos xwing video game pilot files. Whenever I would die I would exit the game and type pilot or whatever I called it and it would automatically restore my previous status.




I DON'T LIKE TO LOSE

[TBoneit]

I still use the format command, even in XP as in

@echo off
format a: /%1 /V:1440
exit

I call it 144 bat and use when I need to format a bunch of floppies. I just open the command prompt and type 144 u to unconditional format or 144 q to quick format a bunch of floppies

When Done I just say N when asked do I want to format another disk and it closes the dos prompt window.

I always preferred diskcopy a: a: to opening my computer and chosing copy for the a:

Never used Norton Commander, I always used Magellen and Pctools in the DOS days.

Infact I still use the XCOPY command when I have a lot of data to move with the flags /s /e /c /h /r /f

I think I may be showing my age.

[tug_hill2]

Hello Forum Members, Favorite Dos command was "DIR" - but I renamed the DIR command to just plain "d" - Worked well.

I also recall renaming the "format" command because of all the virus programs that were around.

Never used Norton Commander - Instead I used a file program that eventually evolved into Power Desk Pro - which I still use today.

I also used a DOS frontend called QuickMenu III - which looked a lot like Windows 2.0
The QuickMenu III program actually worked very well - unlike Windows 2.0 which did NOT work very well.
I also liked a program called "list"

tug_hill2

[aedipuss]

EDLIN

oh the nighmares....

[Oscar wallace]

All I remember was it took me two weeks to install a CD ROM on my old windows 3.1 machine using some stupid command line that had to be written in DOS, I have still got an old Toshiba laptop with DOS 6.2 on it gathering dust...........

Favourite command line was HELP.

[Nelson37]

I was gonna say edlin, as well.

Did you know that Patterson wrote that for personal use, never intended it for public consumption, but when he sold DOS to Gates he included it. That's why the commands are so funky, I think it was based on old Wordstar.

DIR /p got me my first job in the PC biz, 20 or so years ago.

[dwill123]

diskcopy a: a: (way back in the day)
ver
cls (I use this one today all the time)
cd

ahh DOS those were the days

[TBoneit]

list was I believe, a program written for PC Magazine. I still have a copy at work and use once in a while when I want a fast way to look at the ascii parts of a file.

Cheers

[greymalkin]

F3.

I also love to use robocopy but I don't think that came around until the emulated dos of windows.

[CrayonEater]

DIR still use it every hour I'm on the computer.

[Prot]

RENAME, without a doubt. A lot faster method of changing a lot of file names all at once, providing they are in the same directory.

[Faustus]

rename oct*.txt dec*.doc

20 files renamed.


Do THAT in the windows freaking explorer.

[lordsmurf]

I used to delete FDISK, just in case somebody was stupid.

I liked CLS, DELTREE, and I had several batch files that I used daily.

[Kairo]

CLS
MD %1
CD %1

[Schmendrick]

At XP's coomand prompt I am still using:

copy /b file1+file2+file3+file3 newfile

to concatenate files.

[gll99]

Not my favorite but the one I used for my boss who got a 80286 with a cga color monitor. We all had 8086-8088 dos only PC's with monochrome screens. He was told by the support people that he could only have color in windows 286 but not in dos. I added the color command to his autoexec.bat and he got what he wanted blue background with white lettering. I got the same computer as him a few weeks later. He said I deserved it and would make more use out of it than anyone else so I got the first upgrade after his.

I often used edlin after redirecting command output to files in batch mode and also doskey to create macros and more complex execution in batch files.

What I had the most fun with though for writing utilities was the debug command. Many times I copied and modified assembly code from PC magazines and compiled .com memory resident executables to control keyboard, screen and speaker functions etc... just using the simple debugger.

My previous experience had been with mainframe programming meant for high volumes of business data so the pc was much more of a hands on type of tool. These pre network office PC's felt more like personal posessions on our desk and there was little fear that experimenting would harm anyone else. Dos seemed so low level that mastering it put you in great demand.

[nzjacob]

I still use RENAME every single day on my XP machine at work. Change 20 names and extensions in 1 second.

My other favourite from the good old days was dir/w .. had to have the /w to see it all on one screen.

[waheed]

FDISK and still use it today...

[ChrissyBoy]

attrib

[SingSing]

DIR/W gets my vote.

[Bjs]

Attrib
Copy *.*
Del *.*
Md / Rd
Fdisk
Format
Fdread / fdwrite ... cloning floppies exactly ... not part of os ... a freebie
Edit
Mem

New

mpgdemux.exe 0xe0 astro.mpg astroclip.m1v ... mpeg1 demuxing ... all in same place .

And

Fdisk /mbr ... get rid of linux ...

[CrayonEater]

Speaking of color for DOS, I always like loading ANSI.SYS and creating color screens, prompts, etc. I had lots of ZIPs with the ANSI art, a few that I kept around just for that purpose (I don't remember there being a good tool for extracting ZIP comments), as well as a collection of ANSI art files.

When I have the time I'll try it with Win 98's DOS.