You
may need to use the command prompt to
run some of the programs listed in this chapter (see Figure 4-1). In addition to the command prompt
application, cmd.exe, two other elements in
Windows XP can also be used as command prompts. The
Address Bar, typically found at the
top of the Internet Explorer window, is where you type a web site
address to instruct IE to open the corresponding web page. The
Address Bar can also be used as a rudimentary command prompt, where
you can type application filenames, document filenames, and even
folder names to open them. The Address Bar can appear at the top of
any
Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer
window, and can even be placed on the
Taskbar. The other alternative to the
command prompt is the
Run entry in the Start
menu, which behaves nearly identically to the Address Bar. To start
an instance of the
Command window, select Start
.cmd or type cmd in the Address Bar of any window.
Note that some of the components listed in this chapter are purely command-line based. That is, rather than having interactive windows of their own, they rely on the command prompt application to receive commands and display information. Many of these types of programs (often called console applications) simply close when they've completed their task. This means that if you launch one of these programs from the Start menu or Address Bar, it will simply appear and disappear before you know what happened. To use one of these components, you must first open a command prompt window (cmd.exe) and type the command there.
Chapter 6 provides more detail on how to use the command prompt and explains the more subtle differences between the command prompt application and the Address Bar. Chapter 3 documents the Address Bar further.