CMD Tips & Tricks

By: JEX Aldeguer

1. Personalize your Command Prompt (cmd)
Windows Command Prompt is white text on a black background on its default. If you get
bored with that, then lets change its color.
- On cmd type in: color /?

Specify the desired color by typing in color XX. First digit was for the background color
and the second digit was for the font color.
For example: color 09

Another example: color 0C

To return on its default color setting, just type-in: color

Itll go back to black and white.

2. Personalize Command Prompt without Commands

- If you want to change the color without entering commands, just click the Command Prompt
icon and select Properties
- Command Prompt Properties dialog box will appear.

- In the dialog box we can change the cursor size on Options tab.
- The font face and size on the Font tab.
- The sizes of the screen buffer and window; as well as the window position on Layout tab.
- And on the Colors tab, we can change the colors of the screen text, the screen background,
the popup text, and the popup background. Selected color values were on it too, thats for
mixing the RGB for the color combination that you want.

3. Open a Command Prompt from the Desktop Right-Click Menu

Most of us manually open the command prompt and typing a path to open a directory at the
command prompt. But theres a fast and easy way to do it.
Just hold down the Shift key and right-click on the desktop.

CMD can also be opened by a right-click on any folder icon in the system while holding down
the shift key

And inside of any folder too:

4. Using CMD to check if there were hackers on your wifi connection

- Right click on cmd and Run as Administrator
- Find the computer name, IP address, and MAC address (a.k.a Physical or Hardware
address)of your computer by typing: ipconfig/all
- Press Enter
- Open your browser and visit http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1 depending on your
router.
- Look for Attached Devices tab or something similar to it
- If there were some strange devices displayed on your router besides from your computer,
then somebody is using your wifi. Setup or change your password immediately.
5. Use CMD to repair Shortcut Virus on flash drives and memory cards
- Right click on cmd and Run as Administrator
- Type-in the following:
attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d drive_letter:\*.*
- Hit Enter
All files and folders will be normal and you will be able to delete the shortcuts, created by
the virus.
Note: Be sure you've typed the drive letter (e.g. j:,h: or D:) instead of "drive_letter" in the command
line.
Example : attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d D:\*.*

6. Using CMD to scan your computer with System File Checker (SFC)
For slow and frequently hanging computers.
- Right click on cmd and Run as Administrator
- Type-in the following: sfc /scannow
- Enter
- SFC will now verify the integrity of every protected operating system file on your
computer.
- After the scan is complete, restart your computer.
SFC is a tool that repairs and restores missing or corrupted system files.
Note: Theres a space between sfc and /scannow

7. Using CMD for USB drives which cant be formatted by computers OS

- Start
- Run
- cmd
- Enter
- Type-in: format j: /FS:FAT32
Note: Replace J with the drive you want to format

8. Using CMD to create a Matrix effect

- Open your note pad .
- Copy and paste the following code into you text pad:
@echo off
color 02
:start
echo %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random%
%random% %random% %random%
goto start
- Save the above file as matrix.bat [The name of the file may be anything but the file must
be saved of .bat format]
- Close the notepad and open the matrix.bat file.
- Just press CTRL+C to stop the matrix effect and press Y to exit CMD.

Have a nice day guys!