List of other DOS (command line) commands that you should know for the OS Technologies

List of other DOS (command line) commands that you should know for the OS Technologies exam:

l COPY: This command is used to create a copy of a file and place it into another directory or disk drive. Its format is COPY FILENAME.EXT NEWFILE.EXT.

l DEFRAG: As files are created, modified, and removed, the disk can become fragmented. Disk fragmentation can impact system performance, because disk drive heads must perform multiple seek operations to access a file. The DEFRAG command reorganizes the disk to eliminate fragmentation. The DEFRAG command can be executed from the command prompt or this same action can be started from the desktop. Use the Start ® Programs ® Accessories ® System Tools

® Disk Defragmenter path to start it. The command line format is DEFRAG X: (where X is the disk drive to be defragged).

l DIR: This command lists the file and subdirectories in the active directory.

l EDIT: This command opens a text line editor that can be used to make changes to some system and user-defined text-format files, such as INI files, and the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files.

l FDISK: This command is used to partition hard disks prior to formatting them for use with a system.

l MEM: This command displays the current usage of system memory. Commonly used options of this command are:

¡ View memory usage by classification--MEM /C

¡ View memory usage by module--MEM /M module-name

¡ View the amount of free memory--MEM /F

l SCANDISK: This command runs automatically at the next startup after a Windows 9 x System is shut down improperly. The SCANDISK command fixes errors on hard disks, floppy disks, a RAM drive, and DBLSPACE compressed drives. It can be started from the System Tools list on the Accessories menu or executed from the command line with the format SCANDISK X: (where X is the drive letter of the disk to be repaired).

l XCOPY: This command is used to copy directories, subdirectories, and files to and from a fixed disk. Using its extensive list of options, the files or directories copied can be expanded or limited as desired by a variety of options, including only files with an archive attribute. XCOPY has some problems handling long file names, though. Its format is XCOPY A:\*.* C:*.* /S, where the /S switch tells the command to copy the contents of all subdirectories as well.

l XCOPY32: This command is used to copy files and directory trees to another disk drive or to a backup media on Windows 9 x systems. XCOPY32 has a more robust list of options than the older XCOPY command. The format for XCOPY32 is XCOPY32 A: C: /S, where the /S switch indicates that the contents of all subdirectories are to be copied.