Like me, you may have run into the problem that when you go to Start > Run and type in “cmd”, you are getting prompted with an “Open With” dialog which is asking what program you would like to open cmd with. This problem can occur when there is another file named CMD on your system, typically in your profile folder. To help locate the rouge file causing the issue you can run the following command in the Run dialog … Continue reading →

Ever get stuck with the screen below? Where you want to install a printer but can’t find the driver .inf only an executable bundled with various vendor software you don’t want installing or perhaps the bundled software won’t detect your printer so you need to enter these manually. Not a problem. Like a .zip file an .exe is a compressed file containing several other files and whats more we can open an executable, with a program such as 7-zip, to … Continue reading →

If you must access a file or a folder that you do not have rights to, you must first take ownership of that file or folder. When you do this, you replace the security permissions that were originally created for the file or folder. To do this via Command Prompt you can use the “takeown” command. A simple example would be: takeown /f test.txt -  which would take ownership of the file test.txt as the current user In the example … Continue reading →

In Windows I would normally be driven to either format a drive through the Disk Management console or by right-clicking on a drive in Windows Explorer and selecting the “Format…” option, but there can be advantages to formatting a driver through Command Prompt. For example if you are reformatting a drive which previously had an Operating System on the drive you can find there are System Partitions on the drive which can’t be seen in Windows Explorer and refuse to … Continue reading →

Getting a computer viruses or some nasty on your system can be a pain in the backside. Here are some top tips to beat it and get back on track. The first step is to arm yourself with a toolkit of anti-virus / malware removal programs. Many malicious programs have the ability to block access to download sites of popular virus removal tools or worse still divert the user to an entirely different web page, who knows what unsuspecting victims … Continue reading →