When you first turn on your computer you see little white numbers and letters skitter quickly across the screen only to disappear until the next reboot. This is MS-DOS displaying information to let you know how it is configuring your computer (even though you can’t read that quickly). You really don’t need to use DOS because its pretty cumbersome but you may need to use it if your OS doesn’t respond. Besides, why would anyone bother with it if there is already windows explorer?.
Anyways, this is just a quick rundown of simple commands
You probably will not be able to just go to DOS after the information flashes but you will be able to choose “Command Prompt” by pressing the start menu: it should be under the accessories directory
Dos is very selective in that it only accepts certain commands
To View the directory contents type in dir
A list similar to the following appears:
Volume in drive C is MS-DOS_6.22 Volume Serial Number is lE49-15E2 Directory of C:\ WINDOWS 09-08-92 10:27p TEMP 05-15-92 12:09p CONFIG SYS 278 09-23-92 10:50a COMMAND COM 53014 09-18-92 6:00a WINA20 386 9349 11-11-91 5:00a DOS 09-02-92 4:23p AUTOEXEC BAT 290 09-23-92 10:54a 7 file(s) 62931 bytes 8732672 bytes free This is a list of the contents in the directory u are in
All the names that have
Creating a Directory
Before you begin, make sure you type in cd\ to make the prompt look like this C:\>
To create a directory type md a space and the name of the directory you want.
Ex. md my docs
To confirm that you successfully created the directory, type dir or dir \p
Its there…if you did as I said
To make a directory within a directory, type cd(space)(and the name of the directory you want to change to so you can make further changes within that directory)
Ex. C:\(name of dir)
To make a directory type in md and the name you want
Deleting a Directory
To delete a directory, use the rd command. The rd command stands for "remove directory."
Just type in rd(space)(the name of the directory you want to delete)
Changing Drives
To change a drive, simply know the drive you want to change to and type it in with a colon
Ex: a:
Copying Files
To copy a file make sure you are in the directory for the file to be copied.
Type: copy (space)(name of the file to be copied, followed by the extension)(space)(the directory to be copied to)
ex. copy edit.hlp \fruit
Copying a Group of Files
You can use wildcards to copy a group of files from the DOS directory to a directory. In a card game, a wildcard matches any card in the deck. In MS-DOS, the asterisk (*) wildcard matches any character in that position and all the other positions that follow it. If you want to copy a group of files with similar names, using wildcards is easier than copying each file individually.
To copy a group of files with the same extension type: copy(space)(an asterisk*)(the extension)(space)(\the name of dir. to be copied to)
ex. copy *.txt \fruit
Renaming Files
To rename files, use the ren command. The ren command stands for "rename."
Go to the file directory where the rename should take place and type: ren(space)(name of the file to be renamed including the extension)(space)(the new name including the ext.)
ex. ren readme.txt peach.txt
Renaming a Group of Files
You can apply the method of what we mentioned before in “copying a group of files” to this. Just change directory to the directory where the group of files to rename are located and type: dir(space)(the name of files to be renamed(a period)(*) to show all files named with that name
ex. dir edit.*
To rename them all just type: ren(space)(name of files to be changed followed by a period and asterisk)(space)(name of files to be changed to followed by a period and asterisk)
Ex. ren edit.* pear.*
Deleting Files
To delete simply go to the directory where the files to be deleted resides and
type:
Formatting a Floppy Disk
To format a drive, type: format(space)(name of the drive)
Ex. format a:
