winget install: exact matching, silent flags and exit codes
Typing winget install git into a terminal and watching an installer appear is the whole of most people’s experience of the Windows…
Windows command line
Windows commands admins actually run: robocopy, reg, schtasks, sfc and the rest, with real output and the switches that matter.
reg query, reg add and reg export: the Windows registry from the command line
reg.exe is the registry's command line front end, and Microsoft's own registry article for advanced users calls it the Console Registry Tool…
where and Get-Command in Windows: find which binary actually runs
where answers one question: when I type this command, which file on disk actually runs? On a machine that has been in…
bcdedit in Windows: read the BCD store and edit boot entries safely
bcdedit is the only editor Windows ships for the Boot Configuration Data store: the binary database that replaced boot.ini and decides which…
driverquery in Windows: audit installed drivers
driverquery prints the list of device drivers Windows has registered, with no module to import and no elevation required on the local…
findstr and find in Windows: the regex dialect, the traps and which one to use
Every CMD one-liner that filters output ends in one of two commands. find looks for a literal string. findstr looks for a…
systeminfo in Windows: reading every field and scripting host inventory
When you land on a Windows box you have never seen before, the first question is always the same: what is this…
powercfg on Windows: power plans, sleep diagnostics and battery reports
powercfg.exe is the command-line front end for the Windows power subsystem. It reads and writes power plans, reports which sleep states the…
schtasks in Windows: create, query and audit scheduled tasks from CMD
schtasks is the command line interface to the Windows Task Scheduler. It creates, queries, runs, stops and deletes scheduled tasks, on the…
sc Command in Windows: Query and Control Services from CMD
How to use sc.exe to query, configure and control Windows services from the command line: start types, recovery actions, dependencies and remote servers.