MS-DOS Advanced Commands

What are these advanced commands?

Below is a list of MS-DOS commands that are not listed in the help manual and are commonly unknown commands. Many of these commands that are known can be very useful when using MS-DOS, while some of the other commands are unknown and/or appear to do nothing.


Note: Please use these commands cautiously, some of the commands can erase data and/or erase data without warning.

ATTRIB ,	The command is short for ATTRIB -a -h -r - s *.* (removes all attributes of a file)
DIR ,	This lists all files including hidden files, does not work in Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000
DIR ...	Lists all directories that do not have extensions.
DOSKEY /APPEDIT	Utilize doskey functions in MS-DOS command utilities such as edlin and debug
FDISK /MBR	Recreates the Master Boot Record
FDISK /Q	Prevents fdisk from booting the system automatically after exiting fdisk.
FDISK /STATUS	Shows you the current status of your hard drives.
FORMAT/AUTOTEST	Formats the hard drive without any prompting.
FORMAT /BACKUP	Like /AUTOTEST but it will ask you for a volume label.
FORMAT /Z:n	Command used with FDISK supporting FAT32, used to specify the cluster size in bytes where n is multiplied by 512.
MEM /A or /ALL	Adds a line into the MEM command which tells the available space in HMA.
SET DIRCMD=0	Will make all directories hidden however still accessible, to get them back SET DIRCMD=
TRUENAME	When placed before a file, will display the whole directory in which it exists.
VER /R	Tells you the Revision and if DOS is in HMA.