Launch sticky notes command line

[ Wednesday, March 10, 2010 | 0 comments ]

Sticky notes application can be launched from command line by running the command 'Stikynot'. Same command can also be used from Run window too.

c:\> stikynot


Launch snipping tool command line

[ Saturday, March 6, 2010 | 0 comments ]

Snipping tool makes it easy to capture snapshot of the current screen. We can launch this tool from command line by running 'snippingtool' command. Same command can be used from Run command too.


This tool is not available in Windows XP/Server 2003.

How to change drive and directory with a single command

[ Wednesday, March 3, 2010 | 0 comments ]

While working in command prompt, many times we face a situation where we have to change to a directory on another drive. For example currently I am working in c:\users\techblogger folder and if I want to change to the directory e:\data\documents\ normally what I do is changing to the e: drive first and then doing 'cd' to the data\documents directory.

c:\users\techblogger>
c:\users\techblogger>e:
e:\>cd data\documents

Instead of executing two commands we can do the same thing in a single command by using /d switch with cd command.

c:\users\techblogger>cd /d e:\data\documents
e:\data\documents>

Delete system file command line

[ Saturday, February 27, 2010 | 0 comments ]

We can't delete files having system attribute set using  del command from command line. For example in the folder c:\dir I have a file convert.exe. Now if I try to delete it from command line

c:\dir>del convert.exe
Could Not Find c:\dir\convert.exe

c:\dir>

But convert.exe is present in the directory c:\dir

If I do dir it shows empty folder.

c:\dir>dir
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is C45C-FE6F

 Directory of c:\dir

27-02-2010  15:25              .
27-02-2010  15:25              ..
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  27,060,707,328 bytes free

c:\dir> 

As a solution, to remove system files from command line, we can use /A switch with del command. In the above example we can run the below command to delete convert.exe

del /A:S convert.exe


This works on all known versions of Windows OS, i.e Windows XP/2003, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Chess Titans in Windows 7

[ Saturday, January 23, 2010 | 0 comments ]

Windows Vista and Windows 7 have lots of new games and Chess Titans is one of them. Playing with computer would be good time pass when you are alone and are bored.  You can launch the game from Start -> All Programs -> Games  and then clicking on Chess Titans. After launching the game click F5 to open options and then select appropriate level of difficulty.

This program(chess.exe) is installed in the directory c:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Chess. This is not added to PATH environment variable. So if you want to launch chess game from command line, add this path to the PATH environment variable as below

c:\> SET PATH=$PATH;"c:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Chess"

There are some bugs found in the Chess Titans game. Check the below videos.




Disable EFS on Windows XP using EfsConfiguration registry key

[ Friday, November 13, 2009 | 0 comments ]

To disable Encrypting File System feature on a System, administrators can run the below command from command prompt.

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EFS" /v EfsConfiguration /t REG_DWORD /d  1 /f       



This works on Windows XP and Windows 2003. It does not seem to be working on Windows7, looks liks EFS registry keys are changed in Win7.

Disable Automatic updates command line

[ Wednesday, November 4, 2009 | 3 comments ]

We can disable windows automatic updates from command line using the below command.


reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update" /v AUOptions /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f 

I have tested this on Windows XP and Windows server 2003 and it works perfectly. After running the above command you can also see a balloon popping up near the system tray with the message "Your computer might be at risk... Automatic updates is turned off......".

To enable automatic updates we need to set the registry value to 0. Command is given below.

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update" /v AUOptions /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f