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MICROSOFT

10 Windows 7 commands every administrator should knowThe command line is often the best place to resolve Windows 7 desktop problems.

These basic commands will help speed your troubleshooting tasks.

By Brien Posey | in 10 Things, December 26, 2012, 4:00 PM PST

Holiday rerun: An oldie-but-a-goodie, these command-line basics topped the list of popular

troubleshooter posts last year.

PC troubleshooting is becoming less common in larger organizations, but consultants and

techs in smaller shops still have to get their hands dirty identifying and fixing desktop

problems. Oftentimes, troubleshooting Windows 7 means delving into the command line.

Here are 10 fundamental Windows 7 commands you might find helpful.

Before I begin...

This article is intended solely as an introduction to some useful troubleshooting commands.

Many of them offer numerous optional switches, which I won't cover here due to space

limitations. You can find out more about each command by checking out TechNet's

command-line reference (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754340%28WS.10%29.aspx).

1: System File Checker

Malicious software will often attempt to replace core system files with modified versions in an

effort to take control of the system. The System File Checker can be used to verify the

integrity of the Windows system files. If any of the files are found to be missing or corrupt,

they will be replaced. You can run the System File Checker by using this command:

sfc /scannow

2: File Signature Verification

One way to verify the integrity of a system is to make sure that all the system files are digitally

signed. You can accomplish this with the File Signature Verification tool. This tool is launched

from the command line but uses a GUI interface. It will tell you which system files are signed

and which aren't. As a rule, all the system files should be digitally signed, although some

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hardware vendors don't sign driver files. The command used to launch the File Signature

Verification tool is:

sigverif

3: Driverquery

Incorrect device drivers can lead to any number of system problems. If you want to see which

drivers are installed on a Windows 7 system, you can do so by running the driverquery tool.

This simple command-line tool provides information about each driver that is being used. The

command is:

driverquery

If you need a bit more information, you can append the -v switch. Another option is to

append the -si switch, which causes the tool to display signature information for the drivers.

Here's how they look:

driverquery -v

driverquery -si

4: Nslookup

The nslookup tool can help you to verify that DNS name resolution is working correctly.

When you run nslookup against a host name, the tool will show you how the name was

resolved, as well as which DNS server was used during the lookup. This tool can be

extremely helpful when troubleshooting problems related to legacy DNS records that still

exist but that are no longer correct.

To use this tool, just enter the nslookup command, followed by the name of the host you

want to resolve. For example:

nslookup dc1.contoso.com

5: Ping

Ping is probably the simplest of all diagnostic commands. It's used to verify basic TCP/IP

connectivity to a network host. To use it, simply enter the command, followed by the name or

IP address of the host you want to test. For example:

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ping 192.168.1.1

Keep in mind that this command will work only if Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)

traffic is allowed to pass between the two machines. If at any point a firewall is blocking ICMP

traffic, the ping will fail.

6: Pathping

Ping does a good job of telling you whether two machines can communicate with one

another over TCP/IP, but if a ping does fail, you won't receive any information regarding the

nature of the failure. This is where the pathping utility comes in.

Pathping is designed for environments in which one or more routers exist between hosts. It

sends a series of packets to each router that's in the path to the destination host in an effort

to determine whether the router is performing slowly or dropping packets. At its simplest, the

syntax for pathping is identical to that of the ping command (although there are some

optional switches you can use). The command looks like this:

pathping 192.168.1.1

7: Ipconfig

The ipconfig command is used to view or modify a computer's IP addresses. For example, if

you wanted to view a Windows 7 system's full IP configuration, you could use the following

command:

ipconfig /all

Assuming that the system has acquired its IP address from a DHCP server, you can use the

ipconfig command to release and then renew the IP address. Doing so involves using the

following commands:

ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

Another handy thing you can do with ipconfig is flush the DNS resolver cache. This can be

helpful when a system is resolving DNS addresses incorrectly. You can flush the DNS cache

by using this command:

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ipconfig /flushdns

8: Repair-bde

If a drive that is encrypted with BitLocker has problems, you can sometimes recover the data

using a utility called repair-bde. To use this command, you will need a destination drive to

which the recovered data can be written, as well as your BitLocker recovery key or recovery

password. The basic syntax for this command is:

repair-bde <source> <destination> -rk | rp <source>

You must specify the source drive, the destination drive, and either the rk (recovery key) or

the rp (recovery password) switch, along with the path to the recovery key or the recovery

password. Here are two examples of how to use this utility:

repair-bde c: d: -rk e:\recovery.bek

repair-bde c: d: -rp 111111-111111-111111-111111-111111-111111

9: Tasklist

The tasklist command is designed to provide information about the tasks that are running on

a Windows 7 system. At its most basic, you can enter the following command:

tasklist

The tasklist command has numerous optional switches, but there are a couple I want to

mention. One is the -m switch, which causes tasklist to display all the DLL modules

associated with a task. The other is the -svc switch, which lists the services that support each

task. Here's how they look:

tasklist -m

tasklist -svc

10: Taskkill

The taskkill command terminates a task, either by name (which is referred to as the image

name) or by process ID. The syntax for this command is simple. You must follow the taskkill

command with -pid (process ID) or -im (image name) and the name or process ID of the task

that you want to terminate. Here are two examples of how this command works:

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taskkill -pid 4104

taskkill -im iexplore.exe

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About Brien Posey

Brien Posey is a seven-time Microsoft MVP. He has written thousands of articles and written

or contributed to dozens of books on a variety of IT subjects.

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