Hint in Software

Draw Code-39 in Software Hint

From now on, when you see an instruction to type a command, you should assume that you should press ENTER afterward to complete the request (command) Otherwise, the command line will sit there, waiting patiently until the sun grows cold

Now here s where it gets a little gray Because I don t know what s in your root directory, there s no way to predict exactly what your C:\ contents will look like but it s a good bet that something will be different from what I show you here! In theory at least, your display should be similar to Figure 10-3 Windows 2000 and XP will have the same basic look Notice that using the DIR command in any Windows operating system gives you the following information: File name File extension Date and time of creation Size in bytes Designation as either a directory (<DIR>) or a le The number of les in the directory The amount of free space on the drive

Look at your particular results and note the mixture of les, which display a size in bytes, and directories, which have the annotation <DIR> after their name In the preceding examples, AVG7QTDAT is a le of 12,288,463 bytes, and WINDOWS, Program Files, and Documents and Settings are all names of directories Note whether you see the following les or folders in your root (C:\>) directory (you won t see them all): AUTOEXECBAT CONFIGSYS WINNT Yes ___ Yes ___ Yes ___ No ___ No ___ No ___

Yes ___ Yes ___ Yes ___

No ___ No ___ No ___

List the names of all the directories you see displayed in your root directory: _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________

Step 3 The biggest challenge when working with the command prompt is remembering what exactly to type to achieve your goal Learning the commands is one thing, but each command can have switches and options that modify it somewhat Also, you may have noticed that the screen lls up and scrolls from top to bottom, making it dif cult to view all the information you might need Let s look at a command to clear the screen and another to provide assistance with how to use the commands Type the command CLS What happened _____________________________ Type the command DIR / What happened ___________________________ The question mark (/ ) is a standard help switch for most commands Even though I ve used these commands for decades, I still use the / switch occasionally to remember what options are available for a speci c command

Be careful not to confuse the backslash (\) and the forward slash (/) In a command-line world, the path uses the backslash and command switches use the forward slash

At this point, a huge amount of help information is displayed (see Figure 10-4), so you may feel like you re in command overload! Take comfort in the fact that DIR is the most complex command Other commands are more straightforward with their help You don t need to know what all the switches are just know how to use the help switch (/ ) to nd them! The main thing to learn is the syntax of the commands Everything in brackets ([ ]) is optional for the command Notice that DIR is the only mandatory part in that command even though there are several optional switches and parameters This is the same for all of the commands The system will use defaults if you don t specify a switch or

optional parameter It s the defaults that can cause problems if you re not careful when using these commands Now follow these steps: a) b) Put a known good disc with les in your CD-ROM drive and let it spin up and come to rest Cancel any windows that automatically open and proceed to the next substep Type DIR, and examine the resulting list of les and folders Did they change from the previous step _____________________________ Do you think it read the compact disc Probably not, because your prompt is still focused on the root directory of the hard drive c) Type DIR D: (replace D: with the appropriate drive letter for your CD-ROM drive, if necessary) and examine the resulting list of les and folders Did they change this time Aha! The option of [drive:] was needed to change the focus of the DIR command to the CD-ROM drive

The [drive:] option will work for any of the drive letters Floppy diskettes, CDs, DVDs, Universal Serial Bus (USB) thumb drives, and Zip drives are all fair game as well When you use this option, you can look at those other drives without switching from the directory you re in Step 4 Type DIR / to look at two more optional switches: /P and /W The /P switch is used when all the information will not t on one screen, and /W is used to see a condensed listing of the directory Let s focus on a different directory Remember, the CD command will let you change the directory you want to focus on: a) b) Type CD \WINDOWS Type CLS