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

beside them are directories. You can see a list of the files in another directory by changing to that directory

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: del(space)(name of file followed by the extension)

Formatting a Floppy Disk

To format a drive, type: format(space)(name of the drive)

Ex. format a: