5 Awesome Command Prompt tricks most of us don’t know

5 Awesome Command Prompt tricks most of us don’t know


The Windows Command Prompt tool might seem a bit boring or some of you can also rank it as useless in your dictionary but remember, the one who is a little geeky about cmd knows the power it beholds.

So here are some awesome tricks on you can do on cmd:

  1. Explore your Internet connection, know your IP address, DNS Server’s address
    Command Prompt lets you know your IP address. All you have to do is type ipconfig/all in the command prompt and press Enter. Along with your IP address and DNS servers, command prompt will also return a ton of information like your host name, primary DNS suffix, node type, whether IP Routing ,Wins Proxy, and DHCP are enabled, your network adapter’s description, your physical (MAC) address etc . Quite helpful !

  2. Get to know if anybody is eating up your Internet connection
    CMD can let you know if someone is connected to your Local Area Connection and using it. Just follow the steps:-
    a) Open your browser and visit or depending on your router.
    b) Find the tab that mentions “Attached Devices”.
    c) Find the computer name, IP address and MAC Address (sometimes called Physical Address or Hardware Address) of your computer.
    d) Compare it with those displayed by your router in Step 2. If you notice some strange devices, then somebody has been eating up your internet connection.

  3. Shutdown or restart a computer remotely
    To Shutdown Local Machine (Your Computer) Type shutdown -s in the command prompt and press Enter.
    To Restart your Local Computer Type “shutdown -r” in the command prompt and press Enter.
    Similarly to Log Off the Current User Type “shutdown -l”
    Now coming to the interesting part to Shutdown a Remote Computer Type “shutdown -s -m \\name of the computer” in the command prompt and press Enter. Replace \\name of the computer with the actual name of the remote computer you are trying to shutdown.

  4. Shutdown your or a remote computer after a specific time
    To do so type “shutdown -s -t 60” to shutdown your computer after 60 seconds. Upon executing this, a countdown timer displaying a warning message will be shown. Display a Message containing the reason for shutdown Type shutdown -s -t 500 -c “I am hacked. I don’t own this computer anymore.” (with the quotes) in the Command Prompt and press Enter. The -c switch is used in the code to give the reason for shutting down and what is followed in quotes will be displayed in the dialog box as the reason.

  5. Reset Your Forgotten windows login Password
    Open Notepad, copy and paste below code into it.
    netsh wlan start hostednetwork
    Change the SSID and key value with the name and password of your hotspot.
    Save this file as HOTSPOT.bat Make sure you have given the extension as ” .bat ” and finally open the file by right clicking on it and selecting Run as Administrator.

Bonus: Watch Star Wars movie inside cmd- Open Cmd. Make sure you have an Internet Connection Running. Now type telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl and press Enter.

Have fun !