< Back New User Guide I didn't edit much from William's original document .. maybe i'll do some more cleanup later. -jh -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, you've decided to learn to use DOS. I guarantee you won't regret it! First, forget any stories you may have heard about how hard DOS is to use. If you can speak English, you can use DOS. I won't kid you though, DOS is an immensely powerful Operating System and that sheer, thumping, raw horsepower will take some getting use to. But you'll enjoy it, I promise you that. The most important thing is NOT to read this guide and stop there! You'll forget it. You need to try this stuff out. Once is probably all it will take and then you'll have it down pat! Ok, to begin with there are many good GUIs out there for DOS. Desktop/2 and Dos Navigator are both excellent, so you can get graphical if you feel more comfortable that way. BUT, the heart of DOS really is the command line, and it's very easy to learn! So, when you bring up DOS you'll get something like this: C:\>_ What does this tell you? It tells you what drive you are currently on, which directory you are located in, and that it's waiting on you to tell it what you want it to do. First I suppose I should tell you how DOS organizes your computer. DOS divides your computer into drives. Most people have a floppy drive, a hard drive, and maybe a CD-ROM drive. Under DOS, your first drive, your floppy drive is drive A, called "a:". Your second floppy drive, if you have one is "b:". Most people have a hard disk and that's called "c:". If you have a CD-ROM, usually it's "d:". Not too tough I hope. Now there's also directories. Or folders if you think in graphical terms. Different names, same thing. The first directory on your hard disk is called the "root directory". All the other directories, or folders, branch out from this one. The root directory is simply "\". The backslash "\" is the character DOS uses to mean directory. Just like with every other OS you've seen you can have folders inside folders, and files inside folders. So that C:\>_ you saw before means: C: \ >_ ^ ^ waiting for your command | | | root directory | drive C In like suit, C:\GAMES>_ means you're on drive C, in a folder called GAMES. A:\DOCS>_ means you're on drive A, in a folder called DOCS. D:\GAMES\DOOM>_ means you're on drive D, in a folder called DOOM, which is inside a folder called GAMES. Or viewed a little differently, drive D | +-GAMES folder | +-DOOM folder So, how do you move around? Well, you use the "cd" (change directory) command. You just type "cd" then the name of the directory you want to change into and press Enter. Easy as pie. Let's say there's your command prompt. C:\>_ Now say you want to move into the GAMES folder. C:\>cd games_ (and press Enter) C:\GAMES>_ Now let's say you want to move into that DOOM folder that's in this GAMES folder. No problem. C:\GAMES>cd doom_ C:\GAMES\DOOM>_ You're there! If you want to change back to the "parent" directory, the one that this one is in you would: C:\GAMES\DOOM>cd .._ (".." means parent directory, BTW "." means the current directory) I think this is a good time to talk about relative path versus absolute path. It's a minor note. If you're in C:\GAMES and you want to move into the DOOM directory, and you use the "cd doom" command, you're using a relative path. If you're at C:\ and you use "cd doom" that would put you in the C:\DOOM directory (assuming there is one). But if you were at C:\ and you typed "cd \games\doom" that would put you in C:\GAMES\DOOM. You see \GAMES\DOOM is what they call an absolute path or full path. It refers to that one location no matter where you are! So how do you change drives? Just type the name of the drive you want. For instance: C:\>a:_ A:\>_ A:\>d:_ D:\>_ So what else can you do? For one thing you're going to want to be able to view what files are on your computer! You use the "dir" (directory) command for that. For instance: C:\>dir HPFINST DLL 125,712 11-02-98 11:36a HPFIUI EXE 199,456 11-02-98 11:39a LICENSE TXT 3,337 11-02-98 10:59a MASTER HPI 13,341 11-03-98 3:09p INC HPI 26,965 11-02-98 10:59a INSTALL HPI 4,261 11-03-98 3:00p DRIVER HPI 20,783 11-03-98 3:08p CONGRAT BMP 26,838 11-02-98 10:59a INLINE BMP 26,196 11-02-98 10:59a INTRO BMP 26,838 11-02-98 10:59a RESTART BMP 26,838 11-02-98 10:59a STATUS BMP 26,196 11-02-98 10:59a UNSTALL BMP 5,446 11-02-98 10:59a APPS HPI 26,214 11-02-98 10:59a EREG HPI 3,847 11-03-98 2:24p HPINFO DAT 606 11-02-98 10:59a HPFXICM EXE 3,424 11-02-98 11:43a LICENSE BMP 26,838 11-02-98 10:59a EREG DIR 08-05-00 4:09p 21 file(s) 593,136 bytes 36,749,312 bytes free and it shows me a list of files. You can see that there is a file called "license.bmp" and a folder called "ereg". Now if I wanted to make a copy of that "license.bmp" file I might type something like this: C:\>copy license.bmp license2.bmp_ Or perhaps I want to copy it to a floppy disk: C:\>copy license.bmp a:_ Or if I wanted to delete the file: C:\>delete license.bmp_ (delete can be abbreviated "del" if you wish) C:\>del license.bmp_ Just as easy as speaking! That's all you have to do. So, what else can I do? Well you could make a directory called "recipes" if you wanted: C:\>md recipes_ (md is "make directory") or change your mind and remove it: C:\>rd recipes_ (rd is "remove directory") or if you want to know what time it is: C:\>time_ or what date it is: C:\>date_ or suppose you wanted to rename that "license.bmp" file: C:\>rename license.bmp myfile.bmp_ (rename can be abbreviated "ren" if you wish) C:\>ren license.bmp myfile.bmp_ Now, if you're going to be copying files, deleting files, etc then you'll need to know this one little thing: there are some rectrictions on what you can use as a name for the file. DOS uses an 8.3 filesystem, that is your file can have an 8 character long name and a 3 character extension which is usually used to tell what type of file it is. Also you can't use special characters used for directories and commands. You can't use "\" becuase you already know what it's used for, so you can't have a file named "my\file.txt" You also can't use slashes "/", plus signs "+", or commas becuase those can have special uses with some commands. So the filename "letter.doc" would be okay, but "big huge file.doc" wouldn't. The .doc extension tells you that this is a document. ".pic" is sometimes used for pictures, you get the idea. ".txt" is for text ".exe or .com" means it's an executable program! Here's a couple more useful notes: You can run programs by just typing their names, so if you wanted to run a program named "gocarts", you'd just type gocarts at the prompt. If you run into a TXT file (text file) and want to edit it, you'd just type "edit FILENAMEHERE" at the prompt. You can format disks using the "format" command: C:\>format a:_ or get help on a command by: C:\>help COMMANDNAMEHERE_ or even get a quick summary of what a command does with: C:\>COMMANDNAMEHERE /?_ CONGRATULATIONS! You are now a full-fledged DOS user! So if your brain isn't full yet, are you ready for some of the high-powered stuff? OK, one of the coolest things about DOS is "wildcards". Suppose you had 1,000 .TXT files in the TEXT folder you wanted to copy to the floppy disk. you could: C:\TEXT>copy *.txt a:_ or if you wanted to delete all 1,000 of them: C:\TEXT>del *.txt _ Presto! there they go. Something like that could be a real pain but for DOS, no sweat! "*" actually has two meanings: Used like this C:\TEXT>copy *.txt a:_ it means "all", so that command is "copy all text files to the floppy disk". Used like this C:\TEXT>copy myfile.txt *.doc_ it means "the same" so this command means "copy myfile.txt to the same thing but with .doc at the end instead of .txt" or you could even: C:\TEXT>copy *.txt *.doc_ There's also another wildcard "?" which means "one single character, no combinations" Say you had 100 .zip files in C:\ONLINE\DOWNLOAD and the three you want to copy to the floppy disk are called GAME1.ZIP, GAME2.ZIP, and GAME3.ZIP: C:\ONLINE\DOWNLOAD>copy game?.zip a:_ no problem! Now just a few more things. Most commands have switches (options). For instance instead of "dir" you could use "dir /p" (show a page at a time) or "dir /w" (show in wide format). You can of course also "dir *.txt" (show me al text files) or any combination. The help files will tell you options for each command although the "/?" option will also bring up the options for each command. The other thing you should know is that DOS stores it configuration in two special files, CONFIG.SYS (system configuration, device driver, etc) and AUTOEXEC.BAT (command and program that should automatically be executed when your computer boots). By now you know how to look at them (edit FILENAMEHERE). Now I'll whet your apetite for some of the REALLY powerful stuff in DOS. You might want to look into the following commands: xcopy deltree undelete --------------------------------------------------------------------------------