trouble with fc.exe in XP home edition

[Guest]

I cannot seem to figure out how to correctly run fc.exe (I'm using Windows XP
home edition). Every time I try to use it I get the error message "fc: cannot
open (filename) - No such file or folder
Each time, I have made sure that both files are on the same directory (c
I have tried both of these formats:
fc filename.xxx 2ndfilename.xxx
The help message when I pull up fc/? says to use the format
[drive1:][path1]filename 1 [drive2:][path2]filename2
But this doesn't work either-at least not how I'm interpreting it
So my question is if (for example) I want to use fc.exe to compare two
notepad documents stored in My Documents, and the documents have the file
paths
c:\documents and settings\ben johnson\my documents\document1.txt AND
c:\documents and settings\ben johnson\my documents\document2.txt ,
what is the proper syntax for comparing these files with fc.exe using the
command prompt in XP home edition? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Guest]

Compares two files or sets of files and displays the differences between
them


FC [/A] [/C] [/L] [/LBn] [/N] [/OFF[LINE]] [/T] [/U] [/W] [/nnnn]
[drive1:][path1]filename1 [drive2:][path2]filename2
FC /B [drive1:][path1]filename1 [drive2:][path2]filename2

/A Displays only first and last lines for each set of differences.
/B Performs a binary comparison.
/C Disregards the case of letters.
/L Compares files as ASCII text.
/LBn Sets the maximum consecutive mismatches to the specified
number of lines.
/N Displays the line numbers on an ASCII comparison.
/OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
/T Does not expand tabs to spaces.
/U Compare files as UNICODE text files.
/W Compresses white space (tabs and spaces) for comparison.
/nnnn Specifies the number of consecutive lines that must match
after a mismatch.
[drive1:][path1]filename1
Specifies the first file or set of files to compare.
[drive2:][path2]filename2
Specifies the second file or set of files to compare.