MS-DOS Operating System Most Personal Computers run under the MS-DOS Operating System. MS-DOS being the Microsoft Disk Operating System.
It is estimated that almost 10 million machines run under the MS-DOS Operating System and some 20,000 or more end-user applications have been published to run with it.
The Operating System is the program which provides organized services to the computer user and the application programs that they wish to use.
These services consist mainly of access to the hardware resources such as the disk drives, keyboard, etc.
Most computers on campus have an internal clock that will automatically set the date and time for us when we turn the computer on. However, if our computer does not have this feature or our computer has two floppy drives, we will need to do the following steps to set the date and time. …
DOS will let us to check or change the date and time once it has been set. The procedure to do this is as follows: Directions: 1. Type: date and press return. 2. If the correct date is displayed, simply press return. If the date is incorrect, type the correct date and press return. 3. …
To change from our hard drive to a floppy drive, we will need to indicate this change as follows: Directions: 1. Put a floppy disk into drive A. 2. Type: a: and press return. 3. Your prompt should change to A:\> 4. Type: dir and press return. 5. You are now able to see …
Sometimes there is a need to copy all the files on one floppy diskette to another floppy. First we will need a blank formatted disk. Directions: 1. Type: diskcopy a: a: and press return. 2. When asked to put in the source disk, put in the diskette that has the information we want to …
Sometimes there is a need to copy a file from the hard drive onto a floppy disk. This is helpful if we would like to have an extra copy of a certain file as a backup or to transport the copied file to another computer. Directions: 1. Type: copy <insert filename here> a: and …
Copying a File from the Hard Drive to a Floppy Disk Read More »
We use the DISKCOMP command to check that two diskettes are EXACT copies of each other. NOTE: – They MUST both be of the SAME capacity i.e. 720Kb OR 1.44Mb It is usually used immediately after using DISKCOPY command to ensure that both copies are the same.DISKCOMP refers to the original diskette …
We use the CHKDSK command to: • Check a disk to see how much space there is available, and how much is in use. • Fix some disk errors, such as files that show a non-zero size but that really have no data in them • Display information about the disk, including the total disk …
Wildcards are symbols that enable us to perform an MS-DOS operation on more than one file at a time. A file specification that contains wildcards can refer to more than one file because it gives MS-DOS a pattern to match. MS-DOS searches for any file whose filename or extension matches the pattern. There …
It can be used in two ways: 1) HELP {ENTER} 2) HELP {command help needed on} {ENTER} The first way will invoke the full list of MS-DOS commands that we can scroll through using the cursor keys and the TAB key, or point and click the command we are interested in for the opening …
So far, we might have learned how to use some commands in their standard form, e.g. to display the content of a text file, to view a directory listing or to view the tree structure of directories. We can view the output directly on the screen. Using MS-DOS command in standard form, we …
A batch file is simply a text file that we can create by using unformatting text editor tools. e.g. the EDIT command in MS-DOS. A batch file must be named with an extension BAT. e.g. autoexec.bat, menu. bat A batch file is a program which contains MS-DOS commands. Each command used in the …
Now, consider the following instructions md \newdir copy \dos\*.exe \newdir cd \newdir dir cd \ Executing commands at DOS prompt: Normally, we can execute only one MS-DOS command at one time (except we use a “trick”). We cannot give another instruction before DOS has done our current command. If we manually instruct …
All commands that we can use at the DOS prompt can be used in a batch file. We have to follow the same syntax of the commands as we use it at the DOS prompt. For advanced application of batch programs, the following nine (9) special commands are commonly used. Some of them are …
Batch display-suppression operator o @ can be applied to any command as the first character on the command line in a batch program. o It’s used to prevent an individual command from being displayed when it is executed. Batch file label operator o : is used to identify a location in a …
What are the special characters commonly used in a batch file? Read More »
• EDIT command o Usage: EDIT filename.bat Where filename.bat is an optional parameter. We are recommended to give a name when we open the editor because it will simplify some steps in saving the file when it’s done. o Run EDIT command at the command prompt, we will go to an editor mode, …