Editor’s note: After this article was published, Microsoft issued a statement clarifying that cmd.exe will not be going away after all. Read Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’ follow-up column. My very first ...

Sometimes it can be useful to list the contents of one or more directories in a text file, for example by creating a file catalog. Windows does not allow you to perform this operation from File ...

Before Microsoft had Office, before it had Windows, it had an operating system called MS DOS. MS DOS was a command-line operating system, meaning you had to memorize a lot of commands and type them ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Before Windows, there was MS-DOS—that’s the Microsoft Disk ...

As the forerunner to the graphical user interfaces in Microsoft’s Windows platform, MS-DOS helped set the stage for the company’s dominance in the PC software market. When MS-DOS was released in 1981, ...

It sure looked like Microsoft was putting MS-DOS out to pasture. Now it’s saying that the MS-DOS command prompt cmd will continue to live on. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, “Microsoft is not ...

If you think messing around with the user-interface of a modern console, or even a modern iteration of Windows is hard, spare a thought for anyone involved in PC gaming during the 1980s and early 90s.

In the old days of computing, there was no nice, pretty Windows operating system, so all commands were given through a textual interface. That system persists as the Command Prompt, which supports ...