Windows directory, Registry, and basic commands

Introduction

In this blog post we will learn windows system and basic commands and how to navigate and interact with them using windows command terminal.

I hope everyone is familiar with windows and how to use it using GUI, now we will also learn its command-line usage.

Windows highest directory or root directory is specified as drive:\ but usually its c:\, ‘' is the directory separator in windows link ‘/’ in Linux but we can use both in windows command line

Following are the useful directories of windows root directory:

  • \perflogs: May hold Windows performance logs, but on a default configuration, it is empty.

  • \Program Files: All programs are installed in this folder based on system architecture(x86\x64).

  • \Program Files (x86): In 64-bit architecture all 32-bit programs are installed in this folder.

  • \Users: This folder contains one subfolder for each user that has logged onto the system at least once

  • \Public: This folder serves as a buffer for users of a computer to share files. By default, this folder is accessible to all users that can log on to the computer.

  • \System, \System32, \SysWOW64: These folders store dynamic-link library (DLL) files that implement the core features of Windows and Windows API. Any time a program asks Windows to load a DLL file and do not specify a path, these folders are searched after the program’s folder is searched.

Windows Registry

The Registry is a database used to store settings and options for the windows systems. It contains information and settings for all the hardware, software, users, and preferences of the PC. Whenever a user makes changes to a Control Panel settings, or File Associations, System Policies, or installed software, the changes are reflected and stored in the Registry.

click here to know more about registry

Windows basic navigation commands

cd/chdir: change directory.

copy: This command copies a specified file to a given location.

del/erase: deletes a file or number of files.

dir: this displays the current files and folder directly accessible from either the current directory or the directory specified after the command.

find: searches a specific file for a given string. ex find “hacker” hacker.txt

md/mkdir: This command creates a new directory.

move: Move is a copy/paste command that moves a file from one location to another.

popd/pushd: Allows the user to quickly switch between file paths.

ren/rename: This command is used to rename directories.

rd/rmdir: This allows the user to remove a directory.

start: Allows the user to start a program (so long as the program is an executable, batch or command file).

tree: Displays a graphical file tree of the specified file path, or the current drive if no path is specified.

more/type: To view file as a text in commandline, we can also use it to edit or append text like cat. ex. more > hacker.txt, more » hacker.txt, type > hacker.txt, type » hacker.txt.

For more windows commands (click-me)[https://ss64.com/nt/]

Conclusion

We should learn some windows basic commands, in future, we have to interact with windows command line also.