Tips on Using DOS in Windows 95/98 Appearance All Staff
Don't Tell Me What to Do
Tired of the eight-line help message that appears every time you start a DOS session in Windows? Turn it off by adding the line DOSPromptExitInstruc=Off to the [386Enh] section of your SYSTEM.INI file.
Dress Up Dos
From the MS-DOS Prompt Properties dialog, you can set the size of the type that appears in the DOS window. Click on the Font tab and choose a set of font dimensions from the scrolling window. When you select one, the preview window shows what it will look like. You set the font size for individual MS-DOS Prompt windows, so if you have two or more running, they can use different type sizes.
Long Filenames are Just About Impossible From the DOS Prompt
Are you ever thoroughly confused about that tilde thingy and where to put it? Try enclosing the long filenames in quotation marks. So instead of: C:\>CD progra~1 You can type: C:\>CD "program files" And press enter.....
And speaking about short/long filenames
You can change the way Win95 truncates your long filenames. To make Win95 truncate the filenames to the first eight letters you make a small registry change. Just follow these steps:
1. Start the registry editor 2. Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE 3. Click System 4. Click CurrentControlSet 5. Click Control 6. Click FileSystem 7. Right click on white part of the pane and select New/Binary Value 8. Type NameNumericTail followed by enter 9. Double click the new entry and enter 0 as the value 10. Click OK 11. Restart windows
New DOS DIR
If you type the good ol' DIR command in a MS-Prompt Window, you'll see a new variation on an old theme. In addition to the standard DOS 8.3 filenames displayed on the left, the Windows 95 long filenames are also displayed on the right.
The Perfect Power Prompt
Graphical computing is better than working from a command prompt. But you can still have the command line in Windows 95 and the graphical interface. Right-click on the Start button and select Open. Double-click on the Programs folder and then the Startup folder. Right-click anywhere in the window, select New/Shortcut, and a wizard will open up. Click on the Browse button, navigate to the Windows directory and double-click on the file DOSPRMPT. Finish the Wizard, launch the DOS Prompt, then place the Command Line window where you want it on the desktop. The next time you start Windows, it'll open in the same location.
