How to use the Windows command line (DOS)

This page covers the basics of navigating and using the Microsoft Windows command line. On this page, you learn how to move around in the command line, find files, manipulate files, and other important commands. Keep in mind that there are over 100 different commands used in MS-DOS and the Windows command line. If you are interested in learning about the command line in more detail, see our DOS and command prompt overview, which gives a description and example for every command.

Get into the Windows command line

Open a Windows command line window by following the steps below. If you need additional information or alternative methods for all versions of Windows, see: How to get to an MS-DOS prompt or Windows command line.

1. Click Start.
2. In the Search or Run line, type cmd (short for command), and press Enter .

Understanding the prompt

After following the steps above, the Windows command line should be shown (similar to the example below). Windows often starts you at your user directory. In the example below, the user is Mrhope. So, C:\Users\Mrhope> is our prompt. This prompt shows that we’re in the C: drive (default hard drive letter) and currently in the Mrhope directory, a subdirectory of the Users directory.

Key tips

• MS-DOS and the Windows command line are notcase sensitive.
• The files and directories shown in Windows are also found in the command line.
• When working with a file or directory with a space, surround it in quotes. For example, the directory My Documents would be «My Documents» when typed.
• File names can have a long file name of 255 characters and a three character file extension.
• When a file or directory is deleted in the command line, it is not moved into the Recycle Bin.
• If you need help with any of command, type /? after the command. For example, dir /? would give the options available for the dir command.

Listing the files

Let’s learn your first command. Type dir at the prompt to list files in the current directory. You should get an output similar to the example image below. Without using any dir options, this is how dir output appears. As shown, you are given lots of useful information including the creation date and time, directories ( ), and the name of the directory or file. In the example below, there are 0 files listed and 14 directories, indicated by the status message at the bottom of the output.

Every command in the command line has options, which are additional switches and commands that can be added after the command. For example, with the dir command, you can type dir /p to list the files and directories in the current directory one page at a time. This switch is useful to see all the files and directories in a directory with dozens or hundreds of files. Each of the command options and switches is listed in our DOS command overview. We offer guides for individual commands, as well. For example, if you want to see all the options for the dir command, refer to our dir command overview for a complete option listing.

The dir command can also be used to search for specific files and directories using wildcards. For example, to list files or directories that begin with the letter «A» you could type dir a* to list only the AppData directory, in this above example. See the wildcard definition for other examples and help with using wildcards.

Moving into a directory

Now that we’ve seen a list of directories (shown below) in the current directory, move into one of those directories. To move into a directory, we use the cd command, so to move into the Desktop type cd desktop and press Enter . Once you’ve moved into a new directory, the prompt changes. So, in our example, the prompt is now C:\Users\Mrhope\Desktop>. You can see what files are found in this directory by typing the dir command again.

Understand the files

In the Desktop directory, as shown in the above example, there are 23 files and 7 directories, representing different file types. In Windows, you are familiar with files having icons that help represent the file type. In the command line, the same thing is accomplished by the file extensions. For example, «forum posts.txt» is a text file because it has a .txt file extension. Time.mp3 is an MP3 music file and minecraft.exe is an executable file.

Most users are only concerned with executable files, which as mentioned above, are files ending with .exe, .com, and .bat. When the file name is typed in the command line, the program runs, which is the same as double-clicking a file in Windows. For example, if we wanted to run minecraft.exe, typing minecraft at the prompt runs that program.

Keep in mind that if the executable file you are trying to run is not in the current directory, you get an error. Unless you have set a path for the directory with the executable file, which is how the command line finds external commands.

If you want to view the contents of a file, most versions of the command line use the edit command. For example, if we wanted to look at the log file hijackthis.log, we would type edit hijackthis.log at the prompt. For 64-bit versions of Windows that do not support this command, you can use the start command (e.g., type start notepad hijackthis.log) to open the file in Notepad. Additional information about opening and editing a file from the command line is available on the page linked below.

Moving back a directory

You learned earlier the cd command can move into a directory. This command also allows you to go back a directory by typing cd.. at the prompt. When this command is typed, you’ll be moved out of the Desktop directory and back into the user directory. To move back to the root directory type cd\ to get to the C:\> prompt. If you know the name of the directory you want to move into, you can also type cd\ and the directory name. For example, to move into C:\Windows>, type cd\windows at the prompt.

Creating a directory

Now with your basic understanding of navigating the command line, let’s start creating new directories. To create a directory in the current directory, use the mkdir command. For example, create a directory called «test» by typing mkdir test at the prompt. If created successfully, you are returned to the prompt with no error message. After the directory is created, move into that directory with the cd command.

Switching drives

In some circumstances, you may want to copy or list files on another drive. To switch drives in the Windows command line, type the drive letter of the drive followed by a colon. For example, if your CD-ROM drive is the D drive, you would type d: and press Enter . If the drive exists, the prompt changes to that drive letter. If the drive does not exist or is not accessible (e.g., no disc in CD-ROM drive), you get an error.

Creating a new file

You can create a new file from the command line using the edit command, copy con command, or using the start command to open a file.

Creating a new batch file

In the new test directory, let’s create your first file. In most circumstances, you never need to create any file at the command line, but it is still good to understand how files are created. In this example, we are creating a batch file. A batch file is a file that ends with .bat and helps automate frequently used commands in the command line. We are calling this batch file example, so type edit example.bat at the prompt. As mentioned in the document on creating a file, if the edit command does not work, use the start command to open the batch file in Notepad. To perform this action, you type start notepad example.bat into the prompt.

Both of the commands above open a new blank example.bat window. In the file, type the three lines below, which clear the screen with the cls command and run the dir command.

After these three lines are typed into the file, save, and exit the file. If you are in the edit command, click File (or press Alt + F ) and then Save. After the file is saved and you are back at the command prompt, typing dir displays the «example.bat» file in the test directory.

Now, run the batch file to get a better understanding of what a batch file does. To run the batch file, type example at the prompt, which executes the batch file, clears the screen, and runs the dir command.

Moving and copying a file

Now that we’ve created a file, let’s move it into an alternate directory. To help make things easier, create another directory for the files. So, type mkdir dir2 to create a new directory in the test directory called dir2. After the new directory is created, use the move command to move the example.bat file into that directory. To do this, type move example.bat dir2 at the prompt. If done successfully, you get a message indicating the file was moved. You could also substitute the move command for the copy command to copy the file instead of moving it.

Rename a file

After the file is moved into the dir2 directory, move into that directory with the cd command to rename the file. In the dir2 directory, use the rename command to rename the example file into an alternate name. Type rename example.bat first.bat at the prompt to rename the file to «first.bat.» Now, when using the dir command, you see «first.bat» as the only file.

When renaming any file, make sure the file has the same file extension. If you were to rename the .bat file to a .txt file, it is no longer an executable file only a text file. Also, keep in mind that renaming the file to a different file extension does not convert the file. For example, if you renamed the file as an .MP3, it may look like an MP3 in Windows, but it’s not going to play music.

Deleting a file

Now that we’ve had our fun with our new file, delete the file with the del command. Type del first.bat to delete the first.bat file. If successful, you are returned to the prompt with no errors, and the dir command shows no files in the current directory.

When deleting files, you can also use wildcards to delete multiple files at once. For example, if the directory contained several .GIF image files you could type del *.gif to delete all files ending with the .gif file extension.

Renaming a directory

Go back one directory to get back to the test directory using the cd.. command mentioned earlier. Now, rename our dir2 directory to something else using the same rename command we used earlier. At the prompt, type rename dir2 hope to rename the directory to «hope.» After this command is completed, type dir and you see one directory called «hope.»

Removing a directory

While still in the test directory, remove the hope directory using the rmdir command. At the prompt, type rmdir hope to remove the hope directory.

If the directory you are trying to remove contains any files or directories, you’ll receive an error. To prevent this error, use the /s option. For example, if the hope directory still had the first.bat file, you would need to type rmdir /s hope at the prompt.

Running a program

Any executable file can run from the command line by typing the name of the file. For example, if you listed files using the dir command and see a file named «myfile.exe,» typing «myfile» at the command line runs that program.

How to list available commands

After getting a good understanding of using the command line from the steps shown above, you can move on to other available commands by typing help at the command line. Typing «help» displays a list of available commands with a brief description of each command.

Closing or exiting the command line window

After you are done with the Windows command line, you can type exit to close the window.

In conclusion

Now you have a good understanding of how to navigate the command line, create directories and files, rename directories and files, and delete. As mentioned earlier, there are hundreds of other commands you can use at the command line. If you want to expand your knowledge further, we recommend looking at the options available for each command above and reviewing our commands overview page. You can also use our search to find any command by the name of the command or by the action it performs.

Mkdir: Create directory from command line

In Windows, we can create directories from command line using the command mkdir(or md). Syntax of this command is explained below.

Create a folder from command line:

For example, to create a folder named ‘newfolder‘ the command is:

Create directory hierarchy

We can create multiple directories hierarchy(creating folder and sub folders with a single command) using mkdir command.
For example, the below command would create a new folder called ‘folder1’ and a sub folder ‘folder2’ and a sub sub folder ‘folder3’.

The above command is same as running the below sequence of commands.

Permissions issue

Yoou need to have permissions to create folder for the command to work. Not having permissions to create folder would throw up ‘access denied’ error.

If there exists a file or folder with the same name, the command throws up error.

If you don’t see a file or folder with that name, make sure to check if it’s not hidden.

Handling whitespaces

If the name needs to have space within, you should enclose it in double quotes.
For example, to create a folder with the name ‘My data’, the command would be

Creating multiple folders

mkdir command can handle creating multiple folders in one go. So you can specify all the folders you wanted to create like below

The syntax of the command is incorrect.

If you get this error, make sure you are using the directory paths in Windows format and not in Linux format. On Linux, the directory paths are separated with ‘/’, but in Windows it’s ‘\’.

Rmdir : Delete directory from command line

Do you want to delete a directory from Windows command prompt(CMD)? This post explains how to use the command rmdir to delete folders and their contents. You can also find examples for each use case of folder deletion – empty folders, non empty folders, folders with white spaced names etc.

Delete folder from CMD

Run the command rmdir on the folder.

How to delete a non empty folder

The simple rmdir does not work for folders having some content.

Use /s option to delete the folder contents along with the folder. This deletes all subfolders recursively.

Force delete a folder without confirmation

To force delete directory, without being asked for confirmation, we can use /Q switch.

We can also use ‘rd’ in place of ‘rmdir‘. Both names refer to the same command. This command works on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7 and 10.

Deleting directory with white spaces in the name

Rmdir can delete files with whitespaces in the name, you just need to wrap up the folder name in double quotes as shown in the below example.

Delete contents of a directory but keep the directory

The usecase here is to delete all the contents of the directory but keep the parent directory so that we do not need to create it again. rmdir /Q /S does not work here as it deletes the parent directory too. Rather the below commands should do the trick.

This works in 2 steps – the first command deletes all files, whereas the second one deletes all subdirectories.

Errors

To delete a directory, you should have appropriate access permissions on the directory. Otherwise rmdir throws ‘Access denied’ error.

Thanks dude..I was looking for command line way of deleting nonempty folders.. cheers.

Good old DOS….something tells me one day the world will be saved by a DOS operation. ; )

cannot delete… access is denied. am trying to delete a directory on a flash drive. cannot access permissions because explorer isn’t working. using win7

Note:
Don’t forget to leave a “space” in the command line..
rmdir /Q /S_“folder with spaces in the name” I meant “space”, ait’t “underscore”. And upper case of “S”. Good luck!

Hi
can you show me an example of command to delete this path in bat file.
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communicator

am not able to do this . some error s

Is this in Windows 7/Vista?.
If so then you need to take ownership of the files. You can do that with below command from elevated administrator command prompt.
takeown /F «c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communicator» /R /A

then run the below command to delete this folder.

rmdir /S «c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communicator»

cd program files\microsoft office communicator
then enter press
rd /s “filename”
Then enter

I am getting the following error “The process cannot access the file because it is being us
ed by another process.” what should be the case now?

You should not have the Dir you want to delete open… Close it and then try the command again

Could you kindly post the command for deleting my folder which is at Drive G. Name of the folder is Recycler. Thanks

Thank you so much. I was trying to delete an entire directory of files, about 200k folders and files, and it kept throwing a warning “this folder is shared with other people”. No such warning with this command!

i followed your instructions but i’m getting error to delete a folder in cmd. ERROR = The system cannot find the the specified…

You should make “C:” your default Directory, tot do this type “cd.. && cd..” The type the command again but leave the “C:\” and just type the rest of the code.
It should look like this: C:>rmdir /Q /S Users\Owner\Songs\New

i have installed new win 8 n a back up of old win 8 is in c drive with a name windows old n its not being deleted by ANY means . i have tried this one as well but it says on all files access is denied

I tried the process many times but it says “access is denied”….
My entire path is “C:\program files\alwil software\avast5” . How should i delete this avast5 folder with all the folders inside it.

run cmd.exe as administrator
make sure avast service is not running

Every time I try it says the file cant be found

you’re really awesome. Googled a 1000 times just for this line

“C:\>rmdir /S nonemptydir
nonemptydir, Are you sure (Y/N)? y”

Thank you so much for your help. This changed my life.

Thank you so much for your help. This changed my life.
please attache more basic command for beginner person for my email
tnx

I need to do that, help me out

D:\abc\ has files and folders in it

but by using rd or rmdir

rmdir d:\abc\ /s /q will delete abc folder also but i don’t want this.

the asterisk stands for ‘anything’ in or below the named directory.

I want to delete subfolders of a folder older than 10 days.I am able to delete files but not folder

I wanted to know the bat file programm for deleting the contents (sub folders) of a folder on certain conditions. can anyone help.?

How to delete folders created programatically with timestamp attached at the end.

Like we do for files :
DEL comp*

Is there any command for folders:
RM com*
or
RMDIR com*

I’m wanting to delete the directory c:\windows.old I followed the instructions above I run CMD as admin, I typed in: takeown /F c:\windows.old /R /A And hit enter key. It did this part properly but Then I typed in: rmdir /Q /S c:\windows.old And after every entry it said Access denied. what is the command line/s i need to type to atlas delete the directory c:\windows.old ? (using windows 10)

I got the same problem…….
please someone help.

thank you .
i m so glad

I followed the instructions above I run CMD as admin, I typed in: takeown /F c:\windows.old /R /A And hit enter key. It did this part properly but Then I typed in: rmdir /Q /S c:\windows.old And after every entry it said Access denied. what is the command line/s i need to type to atlas delete the directory c:\windows.old ? (using windows 10.
Please somebody help………………………

takeown /f D:\OrganizationalUnit\Everyone /r /d y
icacls D:\OrganizationalUnit\Everyone /grant administrators:F /T
attrib -s -h -r D:\OrganizationalUnit\EVERYONE /s /d
forfiles /P D:\OrganizationalUnit\Everyone\ -S -M *.* /D -2 /C “cmd /c del /f /q @PATH”
forfiles /P D:\OrganizationalUnit\Everyone\ /M * /D -2 /C “cmd /c if @isdir==TRUE rmdir /S /Q @file”

Thank you very much! With these commands I could remove all “c:\Windows.old” files and directories.

Hello,
I have four folders and I want to keep two of them along with their contents and delete other two folders. How can I do that?
My Parent folder -> Folder 1 (file1.txt), Folder 2 (file2.txt), Folder 3 (file3.txt), Folder 4 (file4.txt).
Need to delete or remove 2 folders and keep 2 folder with their content.
Need command for this.
Any help will be appreciated.

Super Cool!! Deleted a stubborn non empty directory in no time. Thanks for this guide.

I have several folder: folder1, folder2, folder3
how to delete all “folder” with *

Note: This commands doest’n work:
RM folder*
or
RMDIR folder*

I want to thank you very much for the help on deleting these files. I ended up using the CMD method, but it worked perfectly. Again, thank you.

Thanks. After struggling for months and hunting the web, I was finally able to delete a folder using your advice “Deleting directory with white spaces in the name”

OMG! Thank you! Was trying to delete the remaining empty folders of an old eset nod, but couldn’t. This did the trick (hoping). I’m just wondering if its still in the background somewhere. T.hanks again

in programatically if any changes in the inner files or directory after delete the parent directory doesnot work
eg:
system(“rmdir /s/q \””d:/test/hari\””);——>it works
but after
system(“rmdir /s/q \””d:/test\””);—–>it doesn’t work

Thank you for these still useful tips.

That worked verywell. Thank You

I tried the command, but someone has created the directory repeatedly and now I can not removed the base directory. Help

E:\>rmdir /s /q thur2
thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Th
ur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur
2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\
Thur2\AC_FSQ

1.ZIP – The file name is too long.
thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Th
ur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur
2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\
Thur2\AC_HR1

1.ZIP – The file name is too long.
thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Th
ur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur
2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\
Thur2\AC_HR1

2.ZIP – The file name is too long.
The path thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2
\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\T
hur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\Thu
r2\Thur2\Thur2\Thur2\AC_FSQ