As a Windows user, you may have wondered how to troubleshoot your computer when it’s acting up or how to perform certain tasks more efficiently. The answer lies in the command prompt, a powerful tool that can help you accomplish a variety of tasks with just a few simple commands.
In this article, we’ll cover the top 40 Windows command prompt commands you need to know to make your life easier. And we’ll do it in 10 minutes or less. So let’s get started.
First things first, we need to launch the Windows command prompt. You can do this by hitting the Windows key + S or clicking the start menu icon and searching for “cmd”. Once you’ve found it, right-click and run as administrator.
Now that we have our playground, let’s start with a simple command to find your computer’s IP address: “ipconfig”. This will give you all your IP information but not everything. To find your Mac address and DNS server, we need to use “ipconfig /all”. This will give us all the goodies, but it’s way too much information. We can filter it with the “findstr” command. For example, we can use “ipconfig /all | findstr DNS” to see only the DNS information.
If your computer needs a new IP address, you can do that with “ipconfig /release” to let it go and then “ipconfig /renew” to get a fresh new IP address. Keep in mind that this will refresh every single interface on your computer. If you don’t want to do that, then specify the interface just after your command.
DNS can be a problem, and it’s always DNS. To troubleshoot DNS, we’ll see what your computer knows with “ipconfig /displaydns”. But when you’re troubleshooting DNS, it’s kind of hard to read. We can copy that to our clipboard with “ipconfig /displaydns | clip”. This will copy the output of that command to your clipboard so you can paste it in your favorite notepad application.
To flush your DNS resolver cache on your computer, removing any old stale DNS entries, use “ipconfig /flushdns”. This will delete all your DNS entries. Take that DNS, it’s always your fault.
To troubleshoot DNS even further, use NS lookup. With NS lookup, you can find out where a website is hosted and its IP address. If you want to try another DNS server real quick, you can do that by specifying that other DNS server.
Is your screen messy? Clean it with the “cls” command. This will clean your screen, and we don’t even know what it stands for. Just do it.
To find your Mac address, use the “getmac /v” command. This will display all your Mac addresses.
If you want to check if you have any energy or power issues with your computer, use the “powercfg /energy” command. It will give you some awesome stuff and a great report on how you’re doing. Also, use the “powercfg /batteryreport” to see how your battery is doing.
The “assoc” command is super handy. It will show you which file types are associated with which programs. And with the same command, you can specify the file type and have that equal the program you want to use.
If your computer is haunted and going slow, don’t throw it away just yet. Use the “chkdsk” command to check if everything is okay. You can use the “/f” option to see if you need a repair. And you can use the “-r” option to check for physical sector issues and fix them.
In conclusion, these are the top 40 Windows command prompt commands you need to know to make your life easier. With these commands, you can troubleshoot your computer, perform tasks more efficiently, and stay on top of your system’s health.