Open system prompt. How to call the command line? Running the command line

Another article from the series “how to do something in several ways”, plus this article, and others like it, which will be written later, will help me not to repeat myself in new lessons, but simply provide you with links to them.

This article is written using Windows 7 Ultimate as an example. In other versions of Windows, some methods will not work or may be different.

Opening the Command Prompt via the Run window

This is one of the universal ways to launch the command line. It is fast, convenient and works, probably, in all possible versions of Windows.

1. Open the Run window. To do this, press the key combination +R.

2. In the “Open” field, enter “ cmd" and press Enter or OK button.

Launching the command line from the Start menu

This method does not require you to enter anything from the keyboard, but you must have a Start menu.

1. Open the Start menu and go to “All Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt”.

Tip: In Windows 10, the Command Prompt has been moved to the System Tools - Windows folder.

Launch Command Prompt using the search box in the Start menu

Another way when we need the Start menu.

1. Open the Start menu and type “command prompt” in the search box.

2. Select Command Prompt from the search results or press Enter.

Opening a Command Prompt from Windows Explorer

This method is good because you can open the command line immediately for the desired folder.

1. Press and hold the key and right-click on the desired folder in Explorer.

2. In the context menu that opens, select “Open command window.”

Opening a command prompt from the Windows system folder

One of the most unusual and at the same time simplest ways is to find and open the command line in the folder with the operating system.

1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the path below, or copy and paste it into the address field:

The earliest operating systems did not have the graphical interface familiar to modern users. Previously, computer controls were used exclusively text commands.

However, today, despite the variety of possibilities that provide easy and convenient communication between the user and the PC, they are still used. There are also operating systems that work only by entering text commands into them. They are commonly used by database administrators, programmers, and other IT professionals.

An excellent example of controlling the operating system using text commands - Windows 7 command line. It is present in any distribution of this OS and can be run on any PC running this operating system. You don't need to be an administrator or any kind of IT specialist to learn how to use it. Let's look at this issue in more detail.

A little theory and facts

The Windows command line is a toolkit that allows the user to perform various actions on the operating system or on individual programs by entering text commands. The command line usually consists of a command interpreter (shell) and a text interface. First responsible for transmitting and executing commands operating system, second- provides the user with the opportunity entering these very commands and viewing the result of their execution.

The command line offers great capabilities for managing the operating system. Almost everything that can be configured in Windows using the mouse can be done through it. The conclusion follows that the command line is capable of performing a fairly large list of tasks, each of which is performed in turn entering a unique command. It is precisely because of the need to remember the syntax of these commands and the ability to use them that most ordinary users have difficulty working with the command line.

Even so, using the command line is not that difficult of a task. The main thing here is to learn to understand the very principle of its operation, which will be discussed in more detail later.

Why does the average user need the command line?

Surely, each of you has come across various articles on the Internet in which the authors urge you to use one or another command to solve a certain problem. For example, through the command line you can do file management, stored on any media, change parameters system operation or even create Internet connection. However, the above can be easily accomplished using a regular mouse and keyboard.

The importance of the command line lies in the fact that any operations with the system can be performed in the event that access to the graphical interface is lost or there is no other solution.

Here are some examples:

Registration in the system dynamic DLLs(often it is necessary to do this when copying a new DLL file to the Windows system folder - registration will “let the system know” that a new library has appeared);
Setting up a network adapter computer as a wireless Wi-Fi access point;
You can even access the Internet by connecting to the network through one of your existing connections.

You also cannot do without using the command line in case impossibility of control computer using a graphical interface. For example, there are more than one type of virus program that disables Windows Explorer, preventing the user from accessing folders or launching programs.

Using the command line, you can not only launch the application, but also go to any folder in order to work on any files (copying, moving, setting a new name, and so on). And this is only part of the command line capabilities. Let's now move on to practice.

How to Open Command Prompt in Windows 7

The first thing you need to do is run the command line, preferably as an administrator.

It is launched in one of the following ways:

After performing one of the above actions, you will call the command line - usually this is a small black window.

Why do you need administrator rights? The fact is that there are a number of teams that are capable of change system settings. You can execute such commands only with administrator rights. This is done for safety. Therefore, if you are in a guest account, you will not be able to call the command line as an administrator, and therefore not be able to execute commands related to system settings.

How to use the command line

Due to the fact that there are quite a large number of teams, their entire list cannot be displayed in one article. For this reason, we will look at the simplest commands that can be executed without administrator rights. Let's begin.

After launching the command line, you will see a window similar to this:

The address line preceding the blinking cursor is the address current folder on your hard drive (or any other connected device). Navigating through folders (changing the current folder) is one of the simplest actions. Let's run this command. To do this, you need to enter the cd command into the window and specify the full path to the name of the folder we need, and then press Enter to start execution. For example, if you want to go to the address " C:\Program Files", to do this, just enter cd C:\”Program Files”

Important! When navigating to a folder with a space in the name, it must be specified in quotes.

Thus, you can get to any directory on your hard drive. You also need to know that if the folder is located in the current command line folder, then using " CD"it opens without the need to specify the full path ( just specify the folder name after the command).

To move out of the current folder to a higher level folder, i.e. parental, use the cd .. command (the two dots mean the parent directory).

Now let's do it moving to another local drive. To do this, simply specify the drive letters followed by a colon. For example, we want to get to the drive “D:\” - we write the command d: and then press Enter.

This is done using the command " dir" Enter it and the command line will show a list of the contents of the “D:\” drive. Team " dir" can be called from any folder - even to view the contents of a directory on another drive (to do this, you must enter the full path to the name of the desired folder). For example, run: dir c:\windows

Let's look at another command - “ copy" As the name implies, it is used to copy data. For example, you are on the drive " D:\" and you need to copy the file " 1.txt"to a flash drive. To do this, enter copy 1.txt F: Instead of “F:”, you can specify any other drive letter (in our case, copy to drive “C” :\ "") or the full path to the directory where you want to copy files or folders.

A more advanced version of the copy command is the " robocopy", unlike its predecessor, it can copy not only files, but also folders, including their contents.

You don't have to remember the names of all the commands. For withdrawal full list with a brief description type: help

For more detailed information, for example, robocopy, type: help robocopy

note that help displays all descriptions on Russian language, of course, if you have a Russified version of Windows.

Everything discussed here is only a small part of the command line capabilities. If you are interested in using it, we recommend visiting the official Microsoft website, where there is complete information on working with it.

Video on the topic

For most users, the graphical interface proposed by the developers is enough to “communicate” with Windows OS - it is simple and intuitive. But for some purposes that the average user rarely encounters, it is more convenient to use the command line. How to start the command line on Windows?

First, let's figure out what the command line is. Command line (console) interface - text. The user enters certain commands from the keyboard, and the system executes them. The command line is used, for example, to access a website (server) or for problems with the Internet.

In Windows NT OS (Windows 2000 and higher) it is used command line interpreter cmd.exe, which replaced the outdated command.com interpreter, which was used in systems of the Windows 9x and MS-DOS family. The interpreter translates the text command into a form understandable to the system. Launching a command prompt in Windows means running the cmd.exe application.

To open the command prompt, you can use one of the following methods.

Click on the “Start” button. In the menu that opens, select Run. In the window that opens, in the Open line, enter the name of the program cmd.exe and click on the OK button or press the Enter key on the keyboard. In order to open the Run window, you can also use the key combination Win + R (Win is the key with the Windows logo in the bottom row of the keyboard).

You can open the command line in a more “traditional” way, by selecting it from the list of installed programs. To do this, again, click on the “Start” button, select the All Programs item in the menu, then the Standard item, and from the list of standard programs select the program we need - Command Prompt.

But running the command prompt this way may prevent you from running certain commands. To achieve this, you need to run the command line as an administrator. To do this, we “get” to the command line using the previous method (Start - All Programs - Accessories), but click on the phrase Command Prompt not with the left mouse button, but with the right one. A context menu will open. In it, click on the item Run as administrator. A dialog box may appear: “Do you want to allow the following program to make changes on this computer?” Feel free to click “Yes”.

In order not to perform the same manipulations every time you start the command line, you can configure automatic run as administrator. To do this, call the context menu in the same way as in the previous case, but instead of Run as administrator, select Properties. In the properties dialog box that opens, go to the Shortcut tab and click on the Advanced button. In the window that opens, check the box next to Run as administrator, click OK, and in the properties window click Apply and OK.

Windows 7 includes extensible command line interface shell, Windows PowerShell. It can be used instead of the standard command line. Launching Windows PowerShell is as easy as running a regular command line (cmd.exe): Start - All Programs - Accessories - Windows PowerShell.

By running the command line, you can see list of most frequently used commands. To do this, enter the help command and press the Enter key. A list of available commands will open. To get more information about a command you're interested in, type help command_name, for example, help tree. If you need to get information about a specific utility, the utility_name /? construct will help, for example, ping /?.

Command line - quite a useful Windows tool, which can be useful in various situations. And the next time the provider's technical support representative asks you to open the command line and check the ping, you will not have the question “How to open the command line?”

Good afternoon, dear readers of the blog site, today I want to talk about the topic How to open the Windows command line / 10 ways to open the command line. What is cmd, that's what Wikipedia tells us.

cmd.exe- command line interpreter (English) command line interpreter) for operating systems OS/2, Windows CE and for a family of operating systems based on Windows NT (eng. Windows NT-based). cmd.exe is analogous to COMMAND.COM, which is used in the MS-DOS and Windows 9x families. Operating systems of the Windows NT family for the IA-32 and OS/2 architecture also have COMMAND.COM for compatibility with older programs. In the interpreter settings, it is possible to change the cursor size, font, text color and window size.

Let's look at how to open it.

How to open command prompt as administrator

Below we will look at ten ways I know how to open the command line as an administrator.

1 way to launch the command line. Before Windows 8 (unless you have to return the start button)

To open the command line, click start and enter cmd in the search field, the program icon to launch will appear at the top

or enter command line, the effect will be the same

If you need to open cmd on behalf of the Administrator, then this is done with the right button and selecting

Method 2 is by using Run

Press two magic buttons win+R

The Run window will open, type cmd and press Enter.

3 The way to open the command line is through the Windows folder

Open My Computer and go to the path C:\Windows\System32 and find the cmd.exe file there. The method is not the fastest, but anyone can handle it. The essence is simple, the command line, like all utilities, has its own executable file. We find it and launch it, do not forget about the right click and the context menu with administrator mode.

4 The way to call cmd is to create it via a shortcut

In this method, we will create a Windows shortcut for the task at hand. Right-click Create-Shortcut

Specify the location of the file, write cmd here

How to name the shortcut is up to you, I’ll call it cmd too, Done

And we see that a command line shortcut has been created

5 Method to launch the command line, through the task manager

Open the task manager by right-clicking at the bottom of the screen

Go to the menu File-Run new task

We write cmd in the task and click OK and enable the command line.

6 Method to launch the command line, for those with Windows 8 and higher

We go to Start and click on the magnifying glass at the top right, or the magnifying glass can be called up from the side menu on the desktop

We enter cmd and in the search results we see the shortcut we need.

You can also press the down arrow in Start.

The start menu structure will open in which by scrolling to the right you will find the command line

7 Method to launch the command line, for those with Windows 8.1 and higher

Right-click on Start and select Command Prompt

Method 8 through standard programs in start up to windows 8

Open start all programs

Go to Tools - Command Prompt

9 Method using the Explorer menu in Windows 8, 8.1 and 10

Open any folder and click on the File menu on the left

and select open command line, you will immediately be offered two options: simple opening or as Administrator.

The trick is that the command line will open the current directory, not the user's folder.

Method 10 via the Shift button

Select any folder, hold Shift and right-click and from the context menu select Open command window

Here we have figured out how to open the Windows command line, which method is right for you, I don’t know, I just know that there is a choice.

More than one generation of Internet users has already grown up who did not see the beginning of the rapid rise of Microsoft Corporation and do not even know how to open the command line.

A feature of this early version of the Windows operating system, which was called MS DOS, was single-tasking (all processes were performed sequentially, not in parallel) and a predominantly text-based interface.

Nowadays, most operations on a computer running Windows can be performed solely with the mouse, but in those days, even the simplest actions required knowing a lot of complex text commands.

Via a shortcut in the Start menu

Running the Run program to open the command line is a strange idea, since the required shortcut is right next door.

You can also quickly find it by searching in the Start menu.

Due to a significant change in the Start menu interface in Windows 8, this method will be implemented slightly differently.

First you need to go to the application tiles (new version of Start) and right-click on the free area. As a result, a panel will pop up at the bottom, providing advanced options.
In it you need to click on the All applications icon in the lower right corner.

Here you can see a list with additional hidden applications, including the Command Prompt shortcut. Now you need to click on the required shortcut with the right mouse button and select the run as administrator function in the bottom panel.

Advice! Running with administrator rights is recommended because some commands simply will not run normally.

In Windows 10, search works throughout the system. Therefore, to quickly find the command line, you need to press the Win+S combination and enter the name of the program, in this case it is the command line.