Charlie Bress said:
When I run cmd.exe the DOS prompt that shows up is in the form
c:\documents and settings\charlie.
Technically, it's a command prompt, not a DOS prompt. It isn't DOS in the
sense of MS-DOS. It's fully Windows XP without the pictures.
The sort of things that I want to run such as ipconfig, ping, etc. are in
c:\windows\system32.
Yes, that's where they live.
How can I make cmd give me aDOS prompt that defaults to
c:\windows\system32?
Well, you don't need to, but to do that, you'd need to make a shortcut that
specifies that it starts in that folder.
And you don't need to do this because of the PATH environment variable,
which puts the system32 folder in the path, and makes all those tools
available.
If you are asking this because you are finding that the tools don't run,
getting a message that they can't be found, that's actually a problem with
the PATH environment variable.
To fix it, right-click on My Computer, then properties, Advanced, and
Envirionment Variables. In the lower section, click on Path (you may need
to scroll to find it) then on Edit. Add this to the variable value,
preferably near the start:
%SystemRoot%\system32;
Don't miss the semicolon that separates values.
Click OK back to the desktop, and those tools should be available to you.
HTH
-pk
