13 DOS commands you NEVER knew you NEEDED!

[@ookami-chan3328]

I used MS DOS on my family PC back then as a kid. Then we sold our PC and after years what I got was win 98 -> 2000 -> XP in just a few years which was quite a jump. To this day I use command prompt from time to time, lots of stuff you can only do there and also it feels quite nostalgic 😅

[@Carol_in_Spain]

My computer usage goes back before DOS. I started computer programming in 1966 using 80 column punch cards and paper tape. When DOS came in it was new technology for us.

[@SandcastleDreams]

My deceased husband's father used to do that! You must be ancient! And I'm an old fart! 😂 I was 7 years old at the time.

[@dingokidneys]

The first program I wrote in year 11 (1977) was on punch cards run on an HP 3000 minicomputer. I didn't terminate my loop and ended up with a HEAP of printout. I learned from that experience.

[@senior_ranger]

Back in mid-1990s I did tech support in a call center. Anytime I got an uppity customer who thought he knew more than I did, I'd take him into DOS and troubleshoot from there. They instantly became docile and did exactly what they were told.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Shhhh! That's inside information! 😂😂😂

[@ethimself5064]

🤣🤣🤣

[@ookami-chan3328]

lol power move 😂

[@hecntina]

You went from DOS to Windows 95, skipping the OG Windows and then Windows for Workgroups... timeless classics.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Yeah I'm gonna catch hell for it too lol

[@dennispope1323]

Windows for Workgroups... Didn't that also earn the moniker "Windows for Warehouses"? 😂

[@Ivan_Glamdryng]

@@AskYourComputerGuy I was but I will let you slide. This Time! 😉

[@USBIKER26]

@@AskYourComputerGuy Also Windows 3.0 and 3.1

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

@USBIKER26 yep 👍

[@steves1749]

In the early 90’s I had a IBM PC. No windows yet. You had to use DOS commands to do everything. I recall building a little program launcher to run Word and Lotus 1-2-3. Which i used daily.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Damn I remember Lotus 1-2-3...#flashback

[@tg9754]

Wow, this really takes me back in time. I started using PC's in 1983. We had Dos 2.1 before Windows was developed. I also used Dos 6.2 on Floppies. That's all there was for us at that time.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

I kinda felt old admitting that on camera LOL

[@DaveITGuy]

Windows 3.1 was my first O/S.

[@johnmeneses7039]

Actually Windows 3.1 was overlayed on MS Dos and you still had to boot up using an MS Dos autoexec.bat and Config.sys files.

[@mickgibson370]

@@johnmeneses7039 It is still there!

[@TonyFisher-lo8hh]

Win ;3.1 was about the first Win that really worked.

[@MrBobWareham]

This takes me back, when I built my first computer I used DOS6, I remember my first boot up with a blank screen and a, C:\ in the corner and thought now what, thanks for the memory.

[@LairdComanche]

I used MS-DOS 5.0, 5.22, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows 7, and now Windows 10 - I am NOT happy with installing Windows 11 ... Liked your video, there is one improvement though: Before you run the SFC /scannow run the DISM ... restorehealth - because that refreshes the image to the latest version witch is used by SFC to verify the Systemfiles.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Fair point 👍

[@tubeDude48]

Many of these commands can be listed by typing: help at the prompt line. Why sfc isn't listed, I don't know! But I can see why DISM isn't. Should also note you can type: the command, then help after it. An exception is: sfc- you MUST type: help sfc for that to work!

[@LarsV62]

I wouldn't recommend doing that final tip due to security vulnerabilities. You don't want to accidentally run a command as administrator when the command you use has built-in safety limitations and actually notify you that the option you want to use needs administrator access. Instead, use the standard command line and prefix any command that needs administrator access with the "RUNAS" command. Supply user credentials for a user in the administrators group and password after their parameter switches, and the actual command last.

[@ronaldevans5217]

In the mid-1980s I taught journalism & tech writing. My course became popular with both Apple & a company that sold PCs. Both gave me computers. Steve Jobs Apple Macintosh was phenomenal & life-changing with its full GUI esp Word & icons. The Mac set me up for four decades in IT. But I'm also glad I learned Word5 for DOS & essential DOS commands. I still use them today in Windows esp CMD mode.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Nice!

[@bikeny]

Command # 2 reminds me of the scenes in The Hunt For Red October when the 2 subs are communicating. "Give me a ping, Vasily. One ping only, please."

[@rhondae8222]

I appreciate this information. Thank you. 🙂

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

You're welcome!!!

[@BrunoBaronet]

Great video and reminder, thanks!

[@Douglas_Blake_579]

5:35 ... It should be noted that not all versions of Windows install Ping by default. You can add it by going to Control Panel --- Programs and Features, then Windows Features and checking the "Simple TCPIP Services" item. This will enable Ping and a whole bunch of other really cool trouble shooting commands.

[@stephenlipton525]

Wow Scott you are a youngster :-) I go back to dos 3.1 and DR-Dps which was Digital Research Dos.. Our friend Mr Gates didn't event invent Dos. but yeah Great Video And yes... an old dog has actually learnt a new trick. SFC Keep up the good work!

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

LOL yes sir!

[@Douglas_Blake_579]

DOS was a rewrite of CPM (Control Program -for- Microcomputers) written almost a decade earlier by DEC.

[@asd67lkj]

@@Douglas_Blake_579 one of my earlier computers, a Commodore 128, used CPM way before I bought an "IBM" type PC....LOL We must be VERY old,

[@nuk1964]

@@Douglas_Blake_579 CP/M -- Control Program/Monitor, then later Control Program for Microcomputer -- created by Gary Kildall of Digital Research in 1974 Originally made for use on computers based on the 8-bit Intel 8080/8085 CPU (as well as "workalike" CPUs like the Zilog Z-80). PC/MS-DOS would be built from Seattle Computer Product's QDOS -- which was a "clone" of CP/M made for the (then new) 16-bit Intel 8086 CPU (made at a time before Digital Research released their version of CP/M-86 for Intel 8086). Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, CP/M was a "de-facto" standard -- primarily since it served as a "common ground" for application software -- that is, once you had application software that run on CP/M, and that software didn't have any hardware/firmware dependencies for a specific brand/make of computer -- that software can be run on pretty much *any* computer for which CP/M was available.

[@techbio]

Good tips. Often the profile corruption is not actually corruption but just a hiccup that prevented windows from starting up properly while loading the profile (not necessarily permanent corruption) and rather than have to start with a fresh profile and all the work getting it set up right, you can just find the path to your old profile in the registry. It will have I think from memory the word ".bak" appended to it. You just rename the key by deleting ".bak" from the name. Then restart. Probably safe to do this from a complete new profile so use your trick to setup a new profile, but don't bother setting it up just go straight to regedit and fix the path name for your previous profile. Google for more complete instructions but that's the gist of it. Various things can cause Windows to decide the profile can't be loaded and create a new blank profile for that user as a safety measure. But the old profile including not just it's files, but it's reference in the registry is still there able to be restored.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Good point! Just trying to appeal to the novices who wouldn't have a clue how to do any of that...but you're 100% right 👍

[@techbio]

@@AskYourComputerGuy absolutely, the commands you listed are very useful and well within the novice's reach. Just thought I'd mention about the profile fix in case any one reading decides they want to try and recover their profile without setting up from scratch. At the end of the day a blank profile is a way to get back into a working gui so a very useful tip.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

@techbio excellent tip, I appreciate that and I'm sure my viewers will as well 👍

[@DamnableReverend]

Use the command line every day on multiple computers. Quickest way to get a lot of stuff done. I'm in my early forties but started using computers at a pretty young age, and it was pretty hard for me to get used to a GUI. Besides the dos-like commands that are still a part of windows, you can download some pretty useful thrid party command line utilities. One of my favourites is ffmpeg. But the list is endless -- and even moreso if you use LInux instead of windows, of course. never thought of using the Type command in the way you describe here. That's pretty cool actually. A neat trick if you dont' want to open a command window and want to issue a command that makes some output in a list especally is to issue the command from the run box, where you can use the > symbol to send the output to a file of your choosing.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Very true! There's tons more advanced features, but for my mostly novice audience, I tried to keep it to the basic stuff that would be most helpful for everyday needs 👍

[@USBIKER26]

Another neat command is "shutdown /r /fw /t 1" This will restart to the computer Bios.

[@Landvq5rx]

I really love your videos. Thank you for your contribution to the world.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Wow! What a compliment!!! Thank you for the support 👍 ❤️

[@Tio_Loco]

I still have my purchased copy of Spinrite 6.0.. Sometimes it would take 5 or 6 days to go through a Terrabyte HD. But unless there were lots of damaged sectors, Spinrite would save the partition.

[@Loader7272]

the dev has an update for spinrite. 👍

[@Loader7272]

the dev has an update for spinrite. 👍

[@markgreen2170]

if you liked dos, y'all might like freedos ...i have a freedos virtual machine in virtual box with synchronet bbs software installed ...haven't got ppp or modem yet ...just going to pipe to a terminal, running sshd ...haven't messed around with it in a while

[@MathiasYmagnus]

Thank you

[@akoayisangogag]

Command prompt is an emulator? When did that happen? It's a command interface like terminal in linux and macos.

[@sacshellpolk1168]

thanks!

[@gtech66]

When I am troubleshooting over the phone and tell someone to open a command window, they always say, "Wow, old school black window."

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

LOL

[@asd67lkj]

Thanks for that information. Saved in YT. Do you have a text file with those commands, or do I have to go through. page by page , and create a text file?

[@Nick41622]

A strange thing happened to my Acer laptop this morning. It was stuck on the Acer logo & would not go any further. I held down the left shift key & forced a hard shutdown, then got into the blue recovery screen, from there I restored it back & now it is working fine again. I have no idea why this happened, it was working fine last night.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Short answer Windows 😂

[@bobstuckrath1805]

Windows 3.1 WOW! You could get in and out of DOS at will.

[@roncaruso931]

OK, so we see the hosts file, and it looks strange. What do we do? Delete the file?

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

There are free host file editors you can download and remove the extra items. Consult a local pro for what the entries mean and whether it's worth a service call

[@ethimself5064]

I bought my 1st PC with DOS after I found out about about a DOS Shell about 90/91

[@richallen6764]

If I cannot login to Windows, how do I get to a command prompt to run net user for a new account? Will this new account remember all of my settings?

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Try CTRL ALT DEL and if you can get to task manager, you can run CMD from there. The new account will remember your programs, probably very few settings. But at least you can get into Windows and start to rebuild, as well as not lose any personal files

[@mickgibson370]

Windows still uses DOS. It is built in!

[@SeeJayPlayGames]

nope, ever since Windows 2000/XP it has been using the Windows NT kernel, not real-mode capable DOS per se.

[@RoadToTheCup]

DOS the main part of Windows 95

[@KirbyONeilDJSpeed]

Thanks for this Video , some good ones , but on using some commands it just give a demo, on the command's but didn't run them, do I have to have user, not administration Prompt?, Windows Key and X give me a list, so then Picked Command prompt (Admin) is that Why?..

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Sorry, not 100% understanding your question, if you don't mind clarifying. Usually when the command doesn't "run", it's because you didn't type the switches needed (example: sfc without the /scannow option will just show some examples of how to run the command). Maybe that will help answer?

[@HoundDogMech]

Would have been nice if you had made CHAPTERS Boss

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

There are time stamps in the description 👍

[@julzm7067]

Telling the machine what you want it to do as opposed to figuring out where someone hid that?! Too logical!

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

👍

[@DominicMazoch]

I thought Windows 3.0 was the first true DOS GUI?

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

I could have been wrong on which version...thankfully it's not relevant to the video LOL - already catching hell from "old timers" about that 😂

[@maxtrac1]

Can these commands also run in power shell?

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Most, if not all

[@maxtrac1]

@@AskYourComputerGuy Thanks.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

@maxtrac1 you bet 👍

[@RayGeroski]

Is chkdsk still valid in the age of SSD?

[@gibbomonster1545]

Yes... just because your disk is an SSD, doesn't change the fact that file system errors can occur. Back in fat16/fat32 day, chkdsk was looking for cross-linked files and un-alloccated sectors. With NTFS, chkdsk now now looks at indexes, security descriptors and the uniqune sequence number journel ( i think USN = unique sequence number) as well as the over-all logical file/directory structures. As far as I'm aware, and I'm probably wrong, it's not a good thing (TM) to get chkdsk to check for surface defects on an SSD. I don't know off the top of my head if chkdsk will run a surface scan if it detects an SSD, if ppl know, please comment.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Excellent answer, thank you. Not 100% about chkdsk /r on SSD. I don't see how it would harm, but also not sure it helps either

[@SeeJayPlayGames]

@@AskYourComputerGuy it harms them because the process of writing to NAND flash cells slowly wears them out. Granted the endurance is rated in TBW (terabytes written) and with most good drives you should be fine for years, but any time you write to the drive it's (ever so) slowly wearing it out. Running chkdsk shouldn't really impact it much, and if you've got errors, you really don't have much of a choice. *But absolutely do NOT run defrag on an SSD* - it won't help performance at all, and it's a fast road to wearing out the NAND flash. I wonder how much impact a Windows swap file has on SSD durability. I don't know, I run a zRAM swap on Linux myself, so I've completely avoided that issue. But I did run Windows for a while, with a swapfile on the disk. At least the drive had a DRAM cache (which not only helps with speed but also durability by helping to minimize write cycles).

[@pianoman4Jesus]

hee hee hee.... On my Windows client's computer they provide for me to use, I have a NT Command Script which starts a whopping 56+ cmd.exe sessions with specific Window titles and starting directories. 😎 Those are "real" operating systems.... the GUI nonsense, nnnaaaa!!!! 🥳🤣

[@paulrussell2452]

Does anyone remember DOS 1.8? I think it was for internal use.

[@alonzosmith6189]

Checking closet for Windows 3.11

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Dang, forgot about 3.x!

[@retropcscotland4645]

DOS, DOSSHELL. That was my era. This is why Linux is child's play for me. Commands are pretty much the same. WIN 3.11 was meh.

[@lisab3396]

👍👍

[@djburris1961]

Actually, it's NOT DOS. It will run some DOS commands, but you CANNOT run ANY DOS programs in it.

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

👍

[@SandcastleDreams]

Yeah, I was getting all excited about maybe being able to figure out how to run After Dark Ganes again, LOL! Cause if DOS is still in there...sigh, never mind! It was just a pipe dream. I miss Mowin Maniac and Toaster Run. And dang it! Nobody came out with an updated version!

[@ROARROARROAR-w7x]

1 2 3 you should just put the command next to the timestamp and then let us click the timestamp for an explanation on how to use the said command we don't really need to sit here and watch all of this these are pretty basic commands that people just don't know and a lot of people don't have the time to sit there and watch 2 minutes for every command like we just want the command and a simple explanation

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

That's why there are chapter buttons, so you know when the next tip starts. If they were all labeled, that would take the fun out of learning. Not everyone considers these "basic" commands. That's my core audience. I'll take it under advisement, fair?

[@jerryhuculiak9681]

Aura gave me a plether of malicious software be careful.

[@lynskyrd]

real men use the command line. copy & paste this. :)

[@ionamygdalon2263]

An XCOPY tutorial would be very welcome 😊

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

After making this video, it's absolutely on my list!

[@philosoaper]

no... it's not "dos" anymore.. they didn't just change the name... I'm really tired of people still spreading this nonsense

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Ok. But for novice users, the verbiage doesn't really matter. It's the command options that actually matter.

[@philosoaper]

@@AskYourComputerGuy then call it the commandline/terminal!

[@davinp]

WIndows 1.0 - 3.0 was a graphical share on top of DOS. Windows 95/98/ME are still on top of DOS. Windows XP finally killed off DOS

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

agreed, and I stand corrected. Lol I’ve already gotten hammered in the comments for it. Thankfully, for the purpose of the video, the windows version isn’t that relevant. But you’re not wrong 👍

[@SeeJayPlayGames]

*shell not share

[@jxmai7687]

1: format c: /q/u/s 2: del /s /q /f c:*.* Good luck. 🤣

[@1906Farnsworth]

DDOSBox is an actual thing. A program to allow DOS programs to run in Windows that otherwise could not, such as older games. V. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOSBox

[@skynetintex5878]

Errr you missed out Windows 3 - that came way before Windows 95.

[@Frank-uy9in]

Systam32, I'm running systam64 ???

[@smokyofstormwind420]

format C:\ /s /y

[@AskYourComputerGuy]

Not helpful lol