Editor’s note: After this article was published, Microsoft issued a statement clarifying that cmd.exe will not be going away after all. Read Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’ follow-up column. My very first ...

Before Microsoft had Office, before it had Windows, it had an operating system called MS DOS. MS DOS was a command-line operating system, meaning you had to memorize a lot of commands and type them ...

Sometimes it can be useful to list the contents of one or more directories in a text file, for example by creating a file catalog. Windows does not allow you to perform this operation from File ...

It sure looked like Microsoft was putting MS-DOS out to pasture. Now it’s saying that the MS-DOS command prompt cmd will continue to live on. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, “Microsoft is not ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Before Windows, there was MS-DOS—that’s the Microsoft Disk ...

As the forerunner to the graphical user interfaces in Microsoft’s Windows platform, MS-DOS helped set the stage for the company’s dominance in the PC software market. When MS-DOS was released in 1981, ...

In the old days of computing, there was no nice, pretty Windows operating system, so all commands were given through a textual interface. That system persists as the Command Prompt, which supports ...

MS-DOS Mobile app provides new features via the command line interface (CLI) and has returned with the C:\ prompt Windows Phone Store If you liked the vintage DOS operating system, then you need to ...

If you think messing around with the user-interface of a modern console, or even a modern iteration of Windows is hard, spare a thought for anyone involved in PC gaming during the 1980s and early 90s.