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We'll cover basic DOS commands, including date and time, how to use the function keys,
and how to restart DOS.
We'll also show how to handle directories and files, including making a directory listing
on the screen, creating a new directory, changing directories, using the type command to view
files.
We'll show how to rename files, how to delete files, and how to use undelete to recover
erased files.
We'll also show how to use the wildcard feature.
In the disk drive section, we'll show how to format a diskette.
We'll also show how to unformat to bring back erased files.
Show how to make a copy of a disk, and how to back up the hard disk to a floppy.
We'll show different ways to print files from DOS.
And we'll show how to use the DOS shell to perform many of the commands in DOS.
We'll also demonstrate how to use the DOS editor to edit text files on the screen.
In the first section of our video, we'll explain what DOS is and how to use some of the basic
DOS commands, such as setting the date and time, clearing the screen, and restarting
DOS.
MS-DOS stands for Microsoft Disk Operating System.
It's basically a language that you use to communicate in a very basic way with your
computer.
When you start the computer, DOS runs automatically.
And the DOS prompt, or C prompt as it's sometimes called, appears on your screen.
Commands are given to DOS by typing them in at this prompt where the flashing cursor is,
the program is ready to receive commands from the keyboard.
Let's type in a command.
The first one we'll show is the setting the date.
We just type in the word date from the keyboard.
Then you hit enter on the keyboard to send the information from the screen to the computer.
Type enter.
Now it's asking us to enter the new date.
It tells us the current date.
If this date is correct, all we have to do is hit enter again.
If it's not correct, we can type in a new date from the keyboard.
Use the number pad.
Type in.
You notice that the format is listed here, two digits for the month and a dash, two digits
for the day and a dash, and two digits for the year.
So 01 would be January, dash.
Let's say 09 for the date, another dash.
And then let's use 93 for the year.
And again, each time we type in a command, we need to hit enter to send the command to
the computer.
Because on some keyboards, this is called a return key.
Or it may just have this little arrow symbol, the left pointing arrow on your keyboard.
Let's hit enter now.
And now the computer has, the date has been changed in the computer to 0993.
And we get the C prompt again.
We're ready to type in another command.
One command that we can use to clear the screen is the clear screen command.
This is CLS.
We type in CLS and hit enter.
The screen is cleared and we're back to the top left hand corner.
Let's show how to set the time on the computer.
We type in time and hit enter.
Current time is, shows the time.
If this is correct, all you have to do is hit enter.
If it's not correct, you can type in a new time.
And all you need to do for this is type in the hours and the minutes with a colon in
between.
So let's type in, and to set the time, you have to enter it in, in 24 hour time, as in
military time.
So four o'clock would be 16 and then a colon.
And then the minutes, let's say 04.
And then hit enter again.
Now the time has been reset.
Let's clear screen again.
And if we do time again, you can see that the new time has been set.
It's a different time now.
It's a little bit later.
And we can also check the date again.
You see now the date is set at a different date.
It automatically knows which day of the week it is.
And any one of these, if we don't choose to change it, all we have to do is hit enter
on a blank line.
And it goes back to the C prompt.
There's a quick and easy way to repeat commands in DOS.
You can use the F1 and F3 function keys.
Typing F1 will bring in the previously used command one letter at a time.
You can use backspace to remove it.
F3 will bring in the command all at once.
This is a quick and easy way to repeat the last command that you performed.
And then when you hit enter, it performs the command again.
If you should ever need to restart DOS, you can do it without actually turning the computer
off and back on again.
There's a three key combination called Control Alt Delete that you can use to restart DOS
if you've come upon some problem where the screen is not responding or you don't seem
to be getting any response to the things you type in from the keyboard.
We do this by pressing Control, Alt, and Delete all at the same time.
You can of course use the Control and Alt keys that are at the other end of the keyboard
as well.
Press Control, Alt, and Delete all at once, and the computer will restart DOS, and it
will go through the normal startup procedure that you see when you turn the computer on.
This is a little bit better way of restarting DOS.
It saves a little bit of wear and tear on your switch and on the computer and the monitor
as well.
Now DOS has restarted and we're ready to type in more commands.
Next we'll show how to use simple DOS commands to access information in files and directories.
Data files and programs are stored within directories on a disk and are accessed by
DOS using directory and file commands.
The C prompt as it appears here contains the backslash character indicating that we are
currently in the root directory.
Directories are organized in a tree format with the root being the bottom or the trunk
that branches out into other directories.
Each directory in turn may contain files or sub-directories.
To see the directory list on the screen, we type the command dir for directory and hit
enter on the keyboard.
This quickly brings up a list of the directories and files contained within the root directory
on the disk.
Notice the indication directory next to these names.
These are all directories within the root directory on the C disk drive.
The date here shows the date they were created or last modified and the time.
Moving down the screen, we can see other files that are contained within the root directory.
These do not exist in their own directories.
They are contained as files that are stored directly in the root directory on the disk.
Among these are the autoexec file, which is what the computer uses when it starts, when
DOS starts to set up certain initial settings for DOS to run on the computer.
We'll talk more about these kinds of files in a moment.
Notice that files have an extension, a three-letter extension that indicates the type of file
that it is.
File names may be up to eight characters long, followed by a three-letter extension.
The BAT, for instance, indicates this is a batch file.
We'll talk more about these different kinds of files later.
The number here indicates the size of the file in bytes.
This is the amount of space it takes on the disk or in the memory of the computer when
it's loaded in.
This for instance would be 15,348 bytes.
This is also known as 15K, a K being approximately 1,000 bytes or a kilobyte.
This would be nine, roughly 9K, or this would be about 84K, 84,000 bytes.
At the bottom, this tells us we have 23 files total in the root directory, which makes up
a total of 158,000 bytes, and it tells us how many bytes we have left, how many bytes
are free on the hard disk drive.
You may have noticed that we don't actually have 23 files on the screen.
This is because when the files scrolled up from the bottom, some went off the top of
the screen before the end of the list was reached.
We can view the files one screen full at a time so that we don't miss any by adding an
extra command to the end of the dir command.
We type dir for directory, then a space, then we type a forward slash and the letter P.
This stands for pause.
This means the list will pause when it has filled the screen so that we don't miss the
very first part of the directory as it scrolls up.
Now that we've typed it in, we hit enter.
Notice that the screen has filled with directory listings and files, and then it says press
any key to continue.
This will allow us to see the rest of the directory.
Moving back up to the top of the screen, we can now see the information that was lost
off the top previously.
This tells the name of our volume, which is the same as the disk drive.
A volume is another way of saying disk drive.
And the name of this particular volume is MS-DOS 5.
If we were using a floppy disk drive, the volume, each disk would have its own name.
The volume serial number is here.
And this is a directory of C and the root directory, the backslash indicates the root
directory.
And we have the first file listed here and then directories listed below it.
To view the rest of the directory, we only have to press any key on the keyboard.
As it says at the bottom, press any key to continue.
We type a key and the rest of the directory comes up and we can see the bottom of the
directory listing.
We may also view the directory in a wide format by using a forward slash and a W at the end
of the directory command.
We type dir space forward slash and W, then hit enter.
This displays the directory in a different format in columns across the screen.
This may make it easier to view all of the directory names on one screen since it doesn't
have to scroll up.
Notice that we don't, in this kind of arrangement, we don't have the dates and the times and
the sizes of the files, we just have their names.
Directories are listed, are indicated by brackets around the name and files have the three letter
extension at the end.
So these are directories here and these are files here.
It's easy to create a new directory by using the make directory command.
This is indicated by MD, we type MD, then a space, and then the name of the directory.
Let's call our new directory letters, L-E-T-T-E-R-S.
This name again can be up to eight characters long.
Then we hit enter on the keyboard and a new directory has been created.
We can see this directory by typing the dir command to show us a list of all of the files
and directories contained in the root directory.
If we look toward the top now of the new listing, we can see the name letters.
It's a directory, it indicates the date that it was created and the time.
So far this is an empty directory, but later we can store files in it by changing to this
directory when we save the files.
Let's see how to do this, how to change to another directory.
Basically we're working within the root directory.
We change to another directory using the change directory command.
This is indicated by the letters CD, then a space, then we type in the name of the other
directory we'd like to view.
Let's use the name letters for the directory we just created, and we hit enter on the keyboard.
Now the prompt has changed to indicate the current directory.
In other words, letters is the directory we are currently working in.
In order to view this directory, we may type in the dir command and hit enter on the keyboard.
We get a listing that shows us the name of the volume and serial number again, and the
name of this directory.
There are no files in this directory indicated by the zero bytes here.
The two files that are listed merely indicate the actual directory that we're in, which
is the dot.
The dot indicates the current directory, and the double dot indicates the parent directory.
This just shows you that the directory letters is contained within another directory.
In this case, it's the root directory.
Then to add files to this directory, we can create files with our normal programs and
save them in this directory by specifying the directory name within the program.
We can also use other DOS commands to copy files from one directory to another, and we'll
talk about this later.
Now, to change back to the root directory, we use the CD or change directory command
again, CD, and the backslash indicating the root directory, and hit enter.
Next off the bottom of the screen, here we have the C root directory prompt.
We can remove a directory by using the RD command, remove directory.
We type RD, and then a space, and then type the name of the directory to be deleted.
Let's delete the one we just created, letters.
It's important to note that when you delete a directory, you also delete all of the files
that are actually contained in the directory.
Any files that you've saved to that directory will be deleted from the disk.
Now we hit enter after typing in the name of the directory.
Then if we use the DIR command to view the root directory, hit enter, and moving back
up to the top of the screen, we can see that the letters directory has been deleted from
the disk.
It would be here alphabetically if it were still on the disk.
Next we'll show some simple commands for working with files.
Let's type our DIR command first, as we did before, and look at some of the files that
are listed in this directory.
We can examine individual files using the type command.
This will cause files to be printed or typed onto the screen.
Type in TYPE for type, and a space, and then the name of the file.
Let's look at the autoexec file with the BAT extension.
This indicates that this is a batch file.
We'll explain what this is in a minute.
Type in the name, then a period, and the extension, BAT, then hit enter.
This causes the autoexec file to be listed on the screen.
Here at the top, we now see a list, or we see a line that shows the command we just
typed in, and then below that is the actual listing of the batch file known as autoexec.
A batch file is simply a list of different DOS commands.
In the case of an autoexec batch file, it is performed when the computer starts up DOS
for the first time.
Batch files may be created for any group of DOS commands, and normally batch files can
be run just by typing in the name of the file and hitting enter.
As I said, the autoexec file runs when the computer first starts up, and it sets, in
this case, it sets a few different commands that control the way the computer operates.
Let's just explain a few of the commands in this batch file.
The echo off command, for instance, will turn off the display of different commands on the
screen while they're executing.
This prompt, dollar sign P, dollar sign G, changes the normal DOS prompt to the type
that we see here.
The normal prompt would just be a letter for the drive, followed by this greater than sign.
The dollar sign P, dollar sign G, gives us the colon and the backslash, so this is actually
indicating which directory we're currently working in.
Remember when we changed directories a few moments ago, we actually saw the name of the
directory listed with the prompt.
This is what the dollar sign P, dollar sign G does.
This command tells the computer to use that type of prompt.
It gives you the directory that you're working in.
Then next we have some path commands.
These are necessary to tell the computer how to find different programs that you have stored
in the directories on your disk.
When you type in a path command, or when you include one in a batch file like this, it
allows you to be able to execute any program found in those directories by just typing
them in at the C prompt.
Then we have some other commands in this batch file that control the video display and the
mouse and so forth.
We can use this type command to look at any file that contains text, sometimes called
an ASCII file or text file.
We can try to look at other kinds of files, but we won't always have the best results.
The best kinds of things to use for this type command are files that are strictly text,
lists of commands, things that have been typed in straight from the keyboard.
When we get into other kinds of files, such as word processor files and so forth, they
contain many different kinds of control codes that don't print on the screen.
These will cause the computer to beep if you try to use the type command.
Let's show what this is like and how to recover if this should accidentally happen.
Looking down to the bottom of the screen, we'll find that we have our normal prompt
waiting for another command to be typed in.
Let's give the directory command again, the dir, and look at a list, look at our directory
again.
Now, if we try to look at one of these files, for instance, this bottom file, which is a
large word processor file with the type command, we'll get some kind of strange results.
We'll hear lots of beeping coming from the computer, see some strange-looking characters
on the screen.
We don't need to worry about this.
All you need to do is go to the keyboard, because this may be going on for quite a long
time if it's a long file, and you don't want to wait for that to get all the way through.
You can just use the control plus C combination to stop the display of the file.
Just hold control and press C. We'll show how this takes effect.
If we type in the type command and then type in the name of this file that we have that's
a word processor file, including the extension, and then hit enter, we start seeing the strange
characters and we hear the beeping.
All we need to do is go to the keyboard and hit control plus C, and it stops.
And then we're back with the normal prompt at the bottom of the screen, and we can continue
on.
Let's type a CLS.
Remember, this means clear screen, and we're back to a clear screen again.
Moving back up to the top of the screen at the C prompt, let's look at a few other commands
for handling files.
We'll show how to rename a file, how to delete a file, and how to undelete a file.
First, let's call up our directory listing again.
Then at the bottom of the screen, let's choose one of these files to rename.
This one here, number one, notice it only has a two-letter extension, and it should
have three letters.
Let's change this to rename a file, we type in rename and a space, then the name of the
file, the current name, with the period and the extension, then a space, and then we type
in the new name.
Let's just give it a three-letter extension.
Then we hit enter, and it's done.
To see the result of our changes, let's type the dir command again to see a directory listing.
Notice now that the number one file has a three-letter extension.
We can also delete a file.
Of course, we should be sure, first of all, that this is really what we want to do.
To delete a file, we type del and then a space, and then the name of the file we want to delete.
Let's choose the one we just renamed, number one, a period and the extension.
Then we hit the enter key on the keyboard.
Now the file has been deleted.
To check this, let's do a directory listing again.
Notice that it no longer appears in the listing.
Now newer versions of DOS will allow you to undelete something that's been deleted.
Let's try this.
We type undelete and a space, and then we type the name of the file we want to restore.
Then hit enter.
The computer tells us that the deletion tracking file has not been found.
This is a special file that can be set up that keeps track of deletions that you make
so that you might undelete them.
We haven't got one of those set up at the current time, but the MS-DOS directory does
contain one deleted file.
Of those, one may be recovered, and this, of course, could say two or more.
Using the MS-DOS directory, it lists the file with a question mark for the first letter
of the file name.
It lists the information about the file.
If we move over to the right, we can see that it says undelete, yes or no.
If we really want to undelete this, we can just type a Y from the keyboard.
Then it says, please type the first character for this file.
We type in the letter N. Then moving back, it says the file was successfully undeleted.
Now let's do a dir command again.
We can see that in our directory, now this file has been returned to the directory.
It's been recovered.
The next thing we'll show in this directories and files section of our video is how to use
wildcards for file names.
A wildcard is simply a character that stands for another character or letter and allows
us to search for or perform operations on files with similar names.
We can use a wildcard to stand for any letter or group of letters.
For instance, if we want to have a directory listing, but we want to limit it to only files
that have certain extensions, we can use an asterisk, then a dot, and then BAT to look
for any file that has the BAT extension.
Press enter.
Notice that we only have one file in this directory that ends with BAT.
We only have one batch file, in other words, and it has located this file.
Now we can also use a different kind of wildcard that stands for a single letter.
This would be useful if we were looking for files with similar names, except for one or
two letters or similar extensions.
Let's try looking for all of the files, using the asterisk, that end with B, A, followed
by any other letter, and we use the question mark for this.
So this will find the files that end with BAT, BAK, and so forth.
Let's hit enter.
Now we have a list of three files.
We have the batch file, we have these other two files, which are, this is a typical extension
that's given to a batch file when it's just a backup copy of the batch file, BAK.
You can see that wildcards can be useful to help find files that have similar names.
One more thing that we'll show in this section of our video is how to copy a file from one
directory to another.
First let's bring up the directory listing for the root directory again.
Then moving to the bottom, what we'd like to do is copy this file from the root directory
into one of the other directories.
Let's copy it into the WPWIN directory.
To do this, we simply type in the word copy, leave a space, type the name of the file with
the dot and the extension, then a space, and then we type a path for the copy to follow.
We type the disk drive with a colon, backslash indicating the root directory, and finally
the destination directory.
This is called a path.
We tell the copy command where the copy will be made to this WPWIN directory, which is
within the root directory on the C drive.
Finally we hit enter to make the copy.
Hitting enter at this point will copy the file with the same name into the other directory.
We could, if we wanted to rename the file at the same time, type a space and type another
name for the file.
For example, we could type dos2.key or any other name.
For now, we'll keep the same name, and at this point we'll hit enter, and we're told
that one file has been copied.
Now let's look at the directory listing again.
Notice that the file is still here where it was.
We didn't take it away.
We just made a copy of it, but now let's look at the directory listing for WPWIN and see
if the file has indeed been copied there.
We use the change directory command, change directory space backslash WPWIN, enter.
Now the prompt tells us we're in the WPWIN directory.
If we hit dir, we'll see a directory listing for that directory.
After it scrolls up the screen, we see that at the bottom we have the same file that we
just copied is there in this directory.
Now we have two copies of this file on this disk.
Let's go back to the original one, to the root directory, and delete it.
That way we'll only have one copy of that file.
Let's change directories back to the root directory, and just to visually look at it,
we'll type the directory listing again.
Now we'll delete that directory, and we'll delete that file from the root directory.
Delete dos.key and enter.
Now we do a directory listing again, and it's gone.
We could also copy a group of files using wildcard.
Type in copy and space, then type an asterisk and a dot and an asterisk.
This command will copy all of the files in this directory to whichever directory we type
in next.
If we typed in the path like this, it would copy, that is, all of the files from the root
directory into this wp-win directory.
We could also specify files that end with a certain extension to be copied, and so forth,
just as we did earlier.
And this way we could copy entire groups of files from one directory to another.
In the disk drive section, we'll show how to switch to another disk drive, how to format
a disk, and how to copy files from one disk to another.
You may already be familiar with the disk drives in your computer.
You probably have two floppy disk drives.
This one will be A, the top one, usually, or the one on the left, and the one on the
bottom will be B. You may have five and a quarter inch disks.
Make sure they're inserted all the way and the latch is closed.
Or you may have three and a half inch disks.
Make sure they're inserted until they click.
With the floppy disks properly inserted, we're ready to switch from the C drive, which is
the hard disk, to one of the floppy drives.
And we do this by simply typing the letter for the appropriate drive, either A or B.
To switch to the A drive, we type A colon and hit Enter.
And it switches to the A prompt.
Now we can use the dir command to look at the directory of the A drive.
And in a second or two, the A drive root directory appears.
This particular disk has two files on it for a total of 781,000 bytes, or 781K.
Now we can switch to the other disk drive by typing B colon and hitting Enter.
And it takes just a few seconds, and then the B prompt appears.
It takes longer for the computer to check what's on the floppy drives, on the floppy
disks, because they don't run as fast as the hard disk.
Now we can type the dir command for the B drive.
And we get a listing of the directory, the root directory on the B drive.
We can do all the same kinds of directory and file operations on the floppy drives that
we did on the hard disk, within the limits of the size of the floppy drives.
Keeping in mind that we have a limited space available, we can create directories and store
files, the same as we did on the hard disk.
Next we'll show how to format a floppy disk.
Formatting a disk erases anything that's on it and sets up a new pattern on the disk,
so that the computer can store new information on it.
Most disks, when you buy them from the store, come unformatted, and you need to format them
first before you can use them to store information.
You can, however, buy disks that are already formatted for the IBM computer.
Each type of computer needs a different kind of formatting to be used with that particular
type.
We can format a disk also if it has information on it that we want to erase.
Formatting is a quick way to erase an entire disk.
First of all, let's change to our floppy drive, our A drive, by typing A colon, and we get
the A DOS prompt now.
Now let's do a directory listing by typing dir and enter.
We see that the volume and drive A is called My Files, and it has a few files on it.
We want to now format this disk to erase these files to allow us to use the disk for something
else.
So the command for format is just the word format, and we can do it from the A prompt
or the C prompt, either one.
Type in format and a space, and then the drive A colon.
We could use B or we could even format C if you wanted to format your hard disk, which
is something you don't generally want to do.
Then we hit enter.
Now it's asking us to insert the disk that we want to format.
We could take out the disk we have in there now and put in a new one.
In this particular example, we want to format the disk that we already have in drive A.
We'll go ahead and press enter because we're ready.
It checks the existing disk format, and it saves any unformat information.
When you format a disk, you're really just changing the directory on the disk.
Every disk has a directory that the computer uses to find the files on the disk.
When you delete or format something on a disk, it merely makes a notation in the directory.
It doesn't actually go through and erase all the information.
That's why you're able to undelete something or unformat something later, and we'll show
how to do this in a few minutes.
Right now we're going through the formatting process, and the notation at the bottom of
the screen tells us how much has been completed so far.
This only takes a few seconds.
When it's done, it'll tell us that the format has been completed, and there it is.
Format complete, and it asks us for a new label, a new name for the disk.
We can type in a new name.
Let's call it New Files.
It can be 11 characters, including spaces, and then hit Enter.
Now it tells us how much disk space we have available, and it's in the entire disk, of
course.
We can format another disk if we want to.
This way we could format an entire box of new disks if we wanted to do it all at once.
In this case, we'll just say No, we'll type in for No, and hit Enter.
Now we're back to the prompt, and let's do a directory listing, just for curiosity.
See what it looks like.
Now it says the name of the volume.
This particular disk is called New Files, but file not found.
There's no actual files on the disk.
It's blank.
Now we're ready to store new things on it.
If you find that you've accidentally formatted a disk that had some important information
on it, be careful not to store anything else on that disk.
Don't copy anything to that disk.
You can usually, if nothing else has been copied to it, you can usually recover all
of the information on that disk by using the Unformat command.
Type in Unformat on a space, and then the disk drive indication, A colon, and hit Enter.
Now it says insert the disk to rebuild, and it's talking about rebuilding the directory
on the disk, because that's really what has changed.
The information that's on the disk, all of the actual files, are really still there.
We want to rebuild the disk that's in drive A currently, so we'll hit Enter.
Now we get a warning about what formatting, what unformatting really does.
It said this command should only be used to recover from the inadvertent use of the Format
command or the Recover command, and it tells us what's happening.
It's looking for this mirror image, which is the unformat information that was saved
when we formatted the disk.
And then finally, it asks us if we're sure we want to update the system area.
This means the system area is talking about the directory on the disk.
This is what's going to be updated.
It's going to rebuild the directory so that it can tell the computer where to find those
files on the disk.
And in this case, we will type Y for Yes.
And it goes through this process of rebuilding the directory on the disk so the files can
be relocated.
And now it says the system area of drive A has been rebuilt.
You may need to restart the system.
In this case, we won't need to do that.
All we need to do is, let's do a dir command, we dir and then Enter.
And we see now that all of the files on the disk have been recovered, including the old
name for the volume.
Volume in drive A here is My Files, which was the original name that this disk had.
It has the serial number and all of the files listed, their information has been recovered.
Next, we'll show how to copy a file from the hard disk to a floppy disk and also how
to make a copy of a floppy disk.
Let's change back to the C prompt again.
Now we're working on the root directory on the C drive.
Let's do a dir to get a directory listing.
Let's copy this number one file to the floppy drive, to the A drive.
We do this by using the copy command.
Type copy number one dot exa and a space.
Now we put the name, we put a path for the copy to follow to the A drive.
We type A colon backslash, which stands for the root directory, and then we could type
the name of a directory if we knew there was a certain directory we wanted to copy to.
Or we can just leave it at this point and it will copy the file using the same name.
Now if we wanted to rename the file, we could type in a new name at this point.
Let's just leave it like this, and we hit enter.
And one file has been copied and it tells us this.
We can switch now to the other disk and do the dir command and see now that our number
one file has been copied to the A drive.
Now we'll show how to make a copy of an entire floppy disk using a command called disk copy.
We would like to make a copy of this disk that's in the A drive.
And if we had two floppy drives that were the same, if our A drive and our B drive were
both five and a quarter inch floppy drives, we could just do this by copying from A to
B. In our particular case, the B drive is a three and a half inch disk drive.
So the disk copy command won't work in that case, because it needs to copy from copy between
two of the same kind of disk.
You could have two three and a half inch drives or two five and a quarter.
The disk copy command is D-I-S-K-C-O-P-Y.
Disk copy is all one word, and you type a space, and you type the drive that you're
copying from, which is A. If we were copying to the B drive, we would type a B now.
In our case, though, we need to use A again, so we type A. So we're copying from A to A,
which means we'll have to remove the one disk and replace it with the other one.
Then we hit Enter.
Now it's asking us to insert the source diskette into drive A. This is the one we're copying
from, the source of the information.
We already have that disk in there.
We'll go ahead and press any key to continue.
Just press a key on the keyboard.
Now it's copying the information into memory in the computer.
And a disk copy process is just, it just goes through the disk and copies the information
directly off the sectors on the disk without regard for what kind of files they are or
directories and so forth.
Now it's asking us for the target diskette.
So we remove the original disk from the disk drive and replace it with the disk we want
to copy to.
When we've got it ready, we've got the little latch locked down, then we press any key again
to continue.
Then after we've swapped the disks back and forth a few times to complete this copy process,
it finally tells us the serial number of the copy and asks if we want to copy another diskette.
In this case, we'll just type N for no.
Now we get the A DOS prompt again.
Let's do a DIR to look at the directory on this disk.
Now we can see that the information from the other disk has been copied exactly to this
new disk.
The only difference is the serial number.
It has the same volume name, the same name, and all the same files.
This disk copy command can be used only with disks of the same type, as we said earlier,
so that if you have two disk drives that are the same, two five and a quarter drives, you
can copy from A to B. Or if you have two three and a half inch drives, likewise.
But when you have two different drives, or if you only have one disk drive, then you
need to do the disk swapping back and forth in order to copy the information from one
disk to another.
Another way of copying information to another disk is to use the backup command.
A backup is not the same as disk copy or the other copy command, because it saves the files
and the information in a format that can't be used directly from the disk.
It's only for archive purposes, for making a backup, for saving information.
Probably the best way to show this is to go back to the C drive, the hard disk, and let's
take, we can either back up the entire disk, which would of course take a lot of floppy
disks to hold everything on the hard disk, or we can just use backup on a particular
directory or even a particular file.
Let's back up something from the C drive to the A drive.
First of all, let's do a directory on the C drive so we can see some of the files and
directories, and we'll choose some files and directories to back up to the C, to the
A drive.
When you back up, when you use the backup command, you create a special backup file
on the floppy drives, floppy disks, that can only be restored using the restore command.
It's not the same as making a copy onto the floppy disks.
You can't take the information and open up the files normally and use them.
What it does is take the information and compacts it into a special format onto one large backup
file on the floppy disks.
It also allows you to back up a large amount of information onto many different floppy
disks, and it handles all of that for you and tells you when to put the next disk in
and so forth.
We'll show how some of this works.
You back up a file using the backup command, B-A-C-K-U-P, and first of all, for an example,
we'll just back up a file, one file to another disk.
Let's back up the number one file, this one here, and show how this works.
Back up number one, dot, E-X-A, and a space, and then you type the name of the disk where
you want to save the backup file.
And let's just use A and colon.
Now this tells us to insert a backup diskette into drive A, and it says diskette number
one.
You may have large files that will require many diskettes, and so it will tell you which
diskette to put in in order, and you'll need to have the diskettes numbered.
Warning files in the target drive, the A root directory will be erased.
It's letting you know that you're going to be erasing.
When you create a backup file on a disk, it erases all of the files that are currently
on that disk.
We press any key to continue, and it's currently backing up the files to drive A. Now it's
been done, and we're back to the C prompt.
That was a fairly small file.
You may back up an entire directory or an entire disk.
To back up an entire directory, you would type the backup command, and then a space.
Then you would give the name of the directory, you would actually use a path, type the C
and a colon, backslash, and then the name of the directory.
Let's say we wanted to back up our WP win directory, then a space, and then a colon.
When you hit enter now, it asks the same thing, to insert the first diskette ready for the
backup.
This, of course, will probably take many diskettes, and as it does each one, it will ask you to
put in the next diskette.
You press any key to continue, and it's showing you the names of the files that are being
backed up onto the floppy disk.
When it fills up that entire floppy disk with files, then it will stop and ask you to insert
the next diskette.
We won't take the time to do all of this now, we'll stop this process and go on to show
you how to do some other types of backups.
Remember that to stop anything that's happening, any action that your computer is performing,
you use the control plus C keys on your keyboard.
Let's do that now, hold down control and press C. When it gets finished with the action that
it's currently doing, when it gets to a breaking point, then it stops and it has broken.
This little symbol here, the little carrot sign and the C, means a break.
That's the symbol for control C, actually.
Now we're back to the C prompt, and we can show you how to backup an entire hard disk.
To do this, we would type back up again, and a space, and then C colon, the backslash,
and that indicates the root directory, and to make sure that it backs up everything,
all of the subdirectories in that, we have to use a special little command at the end
called a switch.
First of all, we'll tell it where it's going to back it up to, the A drive, then at the
end we use a forward slash and then an S. Using a forward slash and a letter at the
end of a command is called a switch, and it just adds a little extra information to the
command.
This one tells it to back up all of the subdirectories contained in it.
So effectively, you're telling it to back up the entire hard disk.
The root directory and all of the subdirectories will be backed up to A, and we hit the enter
key here, and it tells us again to insert the first diskette, and the A root directory
will be erased.
Let's use control C to break this again, and we'll start over again and show some other
possibilities for backup.
You may want to back up, only add a few files to some files you've already backed up.
Normally, when you do a backup, it erases everything on the floppy disks.
If you want to save things that are already on the floppy disk and just add more files
to it, you can use another switch at the end of your command.
Let's type backup again, and we'll do the command for backing up the entire disk, or
backing up just the root directory in this case.
We'll use the backslash and then A colon, and at the end, we'll use the switch forward slash A.
The A stands for add.
This way, we can just add some files to our backup file without erasing what's already
been backed up onto the floppy, and then we hit enter.
If we want to, in addition to saving all of what's already been backed up, if we want
to just back up the things that have been changed, we may have changed some of our files
we've modified, or we might have added some new files, and we only want to back up those
instead of backing up the entire disk or directory.
We can add another switch forward slash and M, and this tells DOS to only back up the
files that are either new files or files that have been modified since the last time we
did the backup.
So, again, the A means add, and it tells DOS to save the files that are already on the
floppy drive, not to erase them, and add the new files to it.
The slash M means to only back up files that have changed since the last time we did a
backup or files that have been created since the last time.
Now, we'll show how to restore a file from a floppy disk back to the hard disk.
Let's say we've lost a file.
This file, remember that we backed up before this number one.
Let's deliberately delete it using the delete command
and do another directory to show that it's now gone.
If we should accidentally lose a file, if we've already backed it up to a floppy, then
we can restore it from the floppy.
We can use the restore command by typing in restore.
Then we type the disk drive where the backup file exists and a space, and then we can type
in the name of the disk where the file will be restored to.
In this case, it's the C disk.
We can also type the directory.
We can type a directory name so that it has a location to store it in.
In this case, we'll just leave it with the root directory.
Only one backup file exists on that disk, so we don't have to identify the backup file.
When you back things up to a file, it creates one large backup file on however many floppy
disks are required.
In this case, it's just one small file because we only backed up the one file called number
one.
We'll restore that backup file to the C drive by hitting enter.
We make sure that the backup diskette is in drive A as it tells us here, and then we press
the key to continue when we're ready.
Press any key, and now it says restoring files from drive A, diskette number one, and it
tells us the name of the file that has been restored to our C drive.
We're back to the C prompt again, and we'll type dir to look at the directory, and we
see that our number one file has been restored.
Of course, we can restore an entire directory or even an entire disk, depending on what
we originally backed up.
If we back up an entire disk on a regular basis, it's quite a lengthy process, but
it may be something that you want to do to save your valuable data.
However, we don't recommend that you restore an entire hard disk without consulting with
a computer expert first.
There may be another way to save your data.
Any data that you've entered since you last backed up, of course, would be lost when you
restore it because it wipes everything off the disk.
There may be a way to undelete or some other way to save to retrieve the data rather than
using the restore.
We suggest that you consult with a computer expert first before you actually restore
an entire hard disk.
In MS-DOS version 6 and later, backup is performed by typing msbackup and then pressing enter.
We get the Microsoft backup screen, and we use the arrow keys on the keyboard to select
the one we want.
In this case, we're going to perform backup.
We select backup and press enter.
Then in the backup screen, we need to press the arrow key to choose backup from to select
which files we want to back up.
Notice it says, some files on C. If we want to select all the files on C, all we have
to do is hit the space bar when this is highlighted, and this will choose all of the files on C.
Hitting the space bar again will clear this, and now currently no files on C are highlighted.
It tells us also where we're going to back up to, A drive and a 1.44 megabyte, 3.5 inch
floppy disk.
It knows that we have this equipment on our computer because the first time we ran backup
on this computer, it did a compatibility test to see what kind of equipment we had, and
the very first time you run MS-Backup on your computer, the same thing will happen.
It will walk you through a compatibility test to set up the settings for your computer.
To backup all files, go back and press the space bar again on the keyboard.
All files are selected, and then notice down here this information on the screen.
We have 2,315 files, including the special catalog file that will be written onto the
disk when the backup is actually performed.
This will require 94 of our floppy disks, and it will take more than 61 minutes estimated
time to back up.
You can see that it would take a long time and a lot of floppy disks in order to perform
one of these backups, and you probably don't need to back up everything on your hard disk.
You may only want to back up the files that you've created, documents you've created in
your software, and things that you will not be able to recover in some other way.
Generally, the program files that you have, such as Windows or Microsoft MS-DOS, those
things, you generally have the floppy disks, and you will be able to restore those to your
hard disk if they're lost.
Let's go back and show how to select just a few files.
If we actually wanted to perform this backup with all these files, all we'd have to do
next is to go up and highlight Start Backup, and then it would ask us to insert the disks
one by one and perform it.
Let's go back and show how to choose just a few files.
We'd like to choose just a few files on our hard disk to be backed up.
To do this, let's highlight Backup From again, and let's hit the space bar until it has no
files selected.
Notice down on the right, it says zero files selected for backup.
When we get to this point, then we just press Enter, and it takes us to the Select Backup
Files screen, and here we have a representation of the hard disk and all of the directories
and then the files within those directories.
As we move down the screen with our arrow key, it highlights each of the directories
and it shows the files on the right that are in that directory.
Now let's choose a file to be backed up.
Let's just choose one file, go to this directory, and then using your right arrow on the keyboard
move over to the files in the directory, and as you move down, choose a file to be backed
up.
Let's choose this one.
Now we choose it, or we mark it by pressing the space bar, when the file is highlighted,
press the space bar, and that puts a check next to that file, and it also moves the highlight
down to the next one, and you can just keep pressing the space bar to keep highlighting
or marking these files.
If you want to mark an entire directory, you go back over to the directory and press the
space bar there, and notice on the right now this highlights all of the files in that particular
directory.
Let's remove this.
We just want to highlight one file, go back to the right, and we'll highlight this one
file, we'll mark this one file for backup.
Once you've done that, notice down here that OK is highlighted for pressing enter.
Press enter on the keyboard, and that presses that particular button, and now we're ready
to do the backup.
Now it says two files are selected.
This means this counts the file that we want to backup plus the catalog file, the special
catalog file that's created.
This catalog file is saved on the hard disk and on the floppy disk, so you'll always have
some kind of record of what files to backup or what files to restore in case you need
to restore them back to the hard disk.
You'll need one floppy disk.
It should be a formatted disk.
If it's not formatted, this program will format it for you, and it will require about 15 seconds
backup time.
We just need to highlight the start backup button at the top and press enter.
We get a message asking us to insert disk at number one and to drive A. We make sure
that the disk is in there, put it in, and press enter, which will continue.
Notice on the lower left hand corner, if you have something already, if you already have
something on the disk, in this case we do, a previous backup, you can choose to erase
or to overwrite this diskette or retry using another diskette.
If you want to retry, just take out the one that's in there and put a different one in
and then retry.
In this case, we want to overwrite.
We're going to create a new backup file on this disk, so we highlight the overwrite button
and press enter.
In the lower left hand corner, it will keep track of the progress of our backup.
The backup is already done.
Notice the actual time that it took was only four seconds, and it's 100% complete.
Now moving back up, we see this other information box.
How many files were backed up, disks, what the size of the file was, and how long it
took.
It took four seconds for the actual backup, it took 38 more seconds for the things that
we did on our instruction, and this is the rate at which it was backed up.
And this is highlighted here.
Just press enter to clear this box, and then it goes back to the main screen.
Now if we should lose that particular file from the hard disk, we can restore it quickly
using the restore button.
By highlighting restore, pressing enter, go up and we can see our backup set catalog has
the list, has the backup set that we just created.
Files are not saved on the disk as individual files, they're saved in a special format.
And if you select many files, all the files will be bunched together into this special
catalog format file.
That file can only be, that information can only be restored to your hard disk by using
the restore command.
You cannot just copy this file back to your hard disk, because it's saved in a special
compressed way on the floppy disk.
If this is the one, this is the one that you want to restore, the one that's on the current
disk that's in the drive, and notice it says restore from the A drive to the original locations.
You can go ahead and restore that.
Notice at the bottom it says zero files currently selected for restore.
To do, to actually restore, we have to highlight the restore files, and then again press the
space bar, and we're choosing to restore all of the files that were contained in this particular
backup set, and on this disk, and that currently is only one file, that's all we backed up.
To restore that, we go over to the right and highlight start restore, and then press enter.
If we wanted to restore just a few files from that thing, we could also have done select
files, and we would have gone through and we could have marked the individual files
that we wanted to restore, just as we marked them for backup.
For the restore, we highlight start restore, and then press enter, and it goes to restore.
It asks for us to insert that disk in the disk drive, so we'll put it in, and then press
enter for continue, and then it gives us our progress, and it restores it.
It gives us this box again, restore complete, how many files were selected and how many
were restored, number of disks and the size, the total time, and it will tell if any errors
were found.
We press enter to clear this, and then it goes back to the Microsoft backup screen.
To quit the program, highlight the quit button, and for any of these, you can also press the
little letter that's highlighted, the letter B here is red, the letter C here, you can
just press that letter on the keyboard and it will be the same as pushing that button,
or if you're using a mouse, you can also use the mouse to press these buttons by clicking
the left mouse button.
When quit is highlighted, you can just press enter on the keyboard, and then the backup
program quits, and we return to the C prompt in DOS.
In the printing section of our video, we'll show three different ways to print information
from DOS.
The first method we'll show is the print screen method.
What we've done here, we've used the type command to print the autoexec batch file on
the screen.
Now, we could have anything on the screen, it doesn't have to be a text file, it could
be a directory listing or anything on the screen.
You can print whatever's on the screen to the printer using the print screen key on
the keyboard.
This is done by holding down the shift key and hitting print screen, shift, print screen.
And the printer prints out the same thing that was on the screen, again, this could
be any text that was on the screen, it will be sent to the printer.
Another method of printing is to use the print command.
We type print from the keyboard and a space followed by the name of the file we want to
print, and this should be a text file.
Let's use autoexec again.
We type the name of the file and then hit enter.
A message tells us that it's currently being printed.
The file is printed out and then the paper advances to the next page.
The third method of printing is to use the printer mode.
This is turned on by using the control P key combination.
Hold down control and press P to turn on the printer mode.
This means that everything that's sent to the screen will be sent to the printer simultaneously.
Let's activate the printer mode now.
Hold down control, hit P. Now that the printer mode is activated, anything that prints out
on the screen will also print on the printer.
Let's do a directory listing.
VIR, space, it's printed on the screen and also printed on the printer.
Then when you're finished using the printer mode, you turn it off by pressing control
plus P again.
Control plus P acts as a toggle switch to turn the printer mode on or off.
You must have your printer on when you activate the printer mode in order for it to work properly.
In addition, you cannot use the printer mode with a laser printer.
In the next section of our video, we'll show how to use an easier, more visually oriented
method of using the DOS commands called the DOS shell.
We activate the DOS shell by typing DOS shell from the DOS prompt.
This is D-O-S-S-H-E-L-L, it's all one word.
Then we hit enter.
And the DOS shell is immediately activated.
And you can see that it's a visual way of representing the directories and files on
the screen.
Here, for instance, we have the root directory, the files contained in it.
And we can look at these other directories as well.
We'll show how to do this in a minute.
The commands, the DOS commands are contained in menus at the top of the screen.
And we activate these menus by using the alt and arrow keys on the keyboard.
Pressing alt highlights the first menu and also highlights the first letter of the other
menus.
We can move from menu to menu using the arrow keys.
The right arrow will move across the menus, the left arrow moves back.
To open the menu, we use the down arrow.
The menu opens and we have a choice of some different DOS commands in the menu.
While the menu is open, we can use the right arrow to move to the next menu and it opens
at the same time.
We can see different choices, even a help menu that will help us in our efforts to use
the DOS shell and to use DOS commands.
Moving back to the file menu, we can also activate individual commands within the file
menu by using the down arrow.
Moving down the menu and back up again with the arrow keys.
Moving to the right, the same is true in each menu.
We move to the command that we want to perform and then hit enter on the keyboard.
We can also activate these commands by using the highlighted letter.
When this menu is open, then typing an F will perform this command, typing an A will perform
this command, whichever the highlighted letter is.
Moving back over here to file, we can see that there are a few commands available at
this time that we activate by using the highlighted letter.
We close the menus by using the alt key again, hitting alt closes the menu.
We can also choose from the menus by using the highlighted letter as well.
Now we move to other areas of the screen using the tab key.
We press tab to move down to the directory tree window and we use the arrow keys within
that window to select the different directories, up and down arrows.
Now we press tab again to go to the next window and this is the window that actually shows
the files listed in that particular directory.
We can move backwards through the windows by using shift plus tab, shift tab moves backwards
through the different areas.
Notice that we are currently looking at the C drive, the directories and files on this
drive are listed on the screen.
We can switch to the other drives by highlighting this area and then using the arrow keys to
switch to the other drive indications.
We hit the tab key to go back to this area, now this is highlighted in blue and use the
arrow key to go over to the A drive.
Let's choose the A drive, now we actually make it access the drive by hitting the enter
key on the keyboard.
Now it checks the A drive and looking over to the right we can see these are the files
that are on the A drive in the root directory.
What we want to do is move one of these files from the A drive to the C drive to show how
to move a file and we'll also copy one of these files to the C drive to show how to
copy a file and we'll show the difference between moving and copying.
Now to perform some kind of action with these file lists we need to activate this window.
So we just use the tab key as we just did and activate the window that contains the
files, the file list.
Now to highlight or select one of these files we just use the arrow keys on the keyboard,
the down arrow to move down, the up arrow to move up and let's choose this first file
called bold and we'll move it to the C drive.
We actually do the move operation by going to the file menu here and remember we open
up the menu with the alt key, we use the alt key and then the down arrow to open the menu.
Moving down the menu we find the move command here.
Notice you can also use the F7 key instead of actually opening the menu.
This might be quicker if you can remember that that's what F7 is.
Now we choose this command by hitting enter on the keyboard.
Now a dialog box opens up asking us for more information, DOS needs to know where we want
to move the file to.
So we type in the information here.
It has suggested A in the root directory but all we need to do is to backspace here and
type in the path for the file to follow.
We need to type in the drive colon and a backslash and this tells it to move the file to the
C drive in the root directory.
We could type another directory name in to give it some other location on the C drive.
Now we perform the move file procedure by selecting OK and we do this by hitting the
tab key and moving to this OK box.
We could move to the cancel box and cancel or we could move to the help box and open
up the help file if we need help understanding what this DOS command is all about.
We keep hitting the tab key to get back to the OK and once we're in OK there we can just
hit enter.
Now it's actually moving the file.
Notice now in the file list for the A drive that file has been removed.
Now let's switch to the C drive to see if it actually has been moved to the C drive.
Now we use the tab key to move back to this area here and use the arrow key to select
C drive and then hit enter on the keyboard.
Now it reads the disk information and displays the C root directory and here we see that
the bold file has been moved to the C drive.
Now we can copy a file.
It's a similar method.
Let's go back to the A drive, the arrow keys and then hitting enter again to show us the
A drive and the files on it on the disk in the A drive.
Let's choose this next file here.
Use tab to go over and highlight this window.
Now that this one is highlighted, this file has been selected.
Go back to the file menu by using the alt key and the down arrow.
This time we'll choose copy.
Notice that you can also use the F8 key for the copy command.
You might have noticed that some of these commands are followed with three dots.
Some of them don't have dots.
The three dots, this is also called an ellipsis, the dots indicate that more information is
needed.
More is to follow.
And whenever there's three dots, a dialog box will always open up to ask you for more
information.
In this case it will open a dialog box that says where do you want to copy the file to
to give a path and so forth for the file to follow to the new location.
So let's choose copy.
We've selected it now in the menu and to actually choose it or to activate the command we just
hit enter on the keyboard.
And the copy file dialog box is similar to the move file box that we saw a moment ago.
Here we type in the destination, the path for the file to follow when it goes to the
other disk.
We need to backspace and type in C colon, backslash, and again we could type in a directory
name for if we wanted to put it in a certain directory on the C drive.
And we'll tab down to the OK button and hit enter.
It copies the file.
Now notice the difference between move and copy.
We still have this column file on the A drive.
Now let's move to the C drive and see if it actually has been copied to that drive.
We hit tab to move back to the top here and then we use the arrow key to select C and
then hit enter.
It reads the disk information from the C drive.
Now we check here and we see the column file has been copied to the other drive.
This will show how to use the search command, how to use view file contents and how to delete.
For this example, there's a file somewhere on the disk that I want to find and then look
at and then delete if it's the one I think it is.
So let's use the search command first to find the file.
We've got the file menu open here and we can use the arrow key to move down to search.
Now we'll hit enter and the search file dialog box opens.
Currently it's going to do a wild card search.
It'll search for all files and it'll bring up a list of every file on the disk.
You can tell it to search the entire disk with the X in this box or by using the tab
key you can move down to this box and hit the space bar to turn off the X.
That way it'll only search the current directory for the file.
Let's hit space bar again to put the X back in and we'll go back.
We can also use the arrow keys to move around in these boxes.
We'll go back up with the arrow key to this line to type in the title of the file we want
to look for.
We'll use backspace and I'm looking for an old autoexec file.
Type it in and the extension is OLD.
Now we can hit enter and it has found the file.
It's in the DOS directory.
Here it says search results for this file autoexec old.
Now I want to view this file.
I want to see what's in it so I can decide whether or not I want to delete it.
Going back to the file menu by hitting the alt key and the down arrow we can move down
to view file contents.
Notice we can also use the F9 key on the keyboard as a shortcut.
Now we'll hit enter and it shows us the contents of the file.
It's an old autoexec file.
It's just got a few lines in it and I'm satisfied now that this is the one I want to delete.
At the bottom of the screen is a status bar that shows us the current keys, certain keys
that are most important that are currently active.
Notice that it tells us the escape key can be used to cancel this particular mode.
That is the only way to get out of this view file contents mode.
Notice you can also use the enter key as page down.
If you had a long file and you wanted to view it you could use the enter key as well as
the normal page up and page down keys.
The F9 key will allow you to actually view the file in hex code.
This would be good for programmers.
We'll use the escape key now to escape from this view contents mode.
Now we're back in the search window and we've still got this file highlighted.
This is the one we searched for.
We want to delete it now.
Let's go to the file menu by hitting alt again and the down arrow key and move down to delete.
Notice there's a keyboard shortcut for this one as well.
You can use the delete key.
Once you have a file that's been highlighted on the screen, pressing delete key will bring
up the delete command.
Now we can choose it from the menu by hitting enter and it gives us this confirmation box
asking us if this is really what we want to do.
Delete this file and the cursor is here at yes.
All we have to do is hit enter.
We could use the arrow key or the tab key to move the cursor over to here and choose
no or we could move clear over to cancel and that would cancel the entire operation of
the delete operation.
We want to choose yes in this case so we just hit enter and the message says no files match
the file specifier.
This is because we're still in the search mode.
It's trying to find this file but it no longer exists because we just deleted it.
So now we can escape from this search mode by hitting the escape key and now we're back
to the DOS shell screen.
We have some different possibilities for viewing things on the DOS shell screen.
We can use the view menu to choose some of these.
We'll hit alt and we'll use the arrow key to move over to the view menu and then the
down arrow to get some different views that are possible in DOS shell.
Right now we're looking at a single file list that shows the directory on one disk and it
shows files within each individual directory.
We can use dual file lists so we can look at two different directories or two different
disk drives at the same time.
This is handy for comparing two different disk drives or directories.
We can also use a list that will show all files.
We can show the file lists and program lists.
This will allow us to run other programs such as MS-DOS basic or the MS-DOS editor also
to run little disk utility programs such as format and so forth.
We can look at just a program list, the programs only.
Let's show examples of a couple of these.
First let's show dual files by moving down with the arrow to dual file lists and hitting
enter.
Now we have two sets of file lists on the screen.
This one's looking at the C drive and currently this one is also.
We can change this one to one of the other drives to compare two different drives or
we could change this to another directory.
Use the tab key to move through the different areas of the screen.
Going to here, we could change to a different directory.
This way we can compare different directories.
Using shift tab to move back up to here, let's move to a different disk drive.
Let's move to A and hit enter.
Now it's showing us what's on the A drive.
This is a convenient way to view what's on more than one drive.
Now going back to the view menu by hitting alt, using the arrows, let's show the program
and file lists view.
We hit enter to select this view.
Now we have a list at the bottom of some of the programs that you can run.
Run prompt actually will just return you to a regular DOS prompt.
Editor will run the MS-DOS editor program which allows you to type in text files.
MS-DOS basic program is a programming language and if we come down and select the disk utilities,
it will give us some other disk utility programs.
We can move down again to this using the tab key and then the arrow key down to disk utilities
and hit enter and it shows us some of the disk utility programs we can run from DOS
shell.
Disk copy, backup fixed disk, restore, quick format, format and un-delete.
We could choose any one of these programs and by hitting enter run that program automatically.
So you can see that the DOS shell gives you access to virtually all of the DOS commands
without having to memorize them and should you ever need help, you can use the help menu
which gives you a list of different help topics, files that will help you on these different
items.
Now we exit the DOS shell by going to the file menu down to the bottom and choosing
exit.
Notice that you can also use alt plus F4 on the keyboard.
We hit enter and we're back to the familiar DOS C prompt.
In the next section we'll show how to create and edit text files using the MS DOS editor.
We start the editor by typing in the word edit at the normal DOS prompt.
Edit and then enter.
The MS DOS editor opens up on the screen.
This program is very similar to the DOS shell in that it has the menus at the top and it
operates very much the same way.
First we press escape to clear this dialog box.
Then moving up to the top of the screen, we can open the various menus using the alt key
on the keyboard.
We hit alt.
It highlights the file menu and also highlights the first letter of each of the other menus.
And we open the menu as we did in DOS shell by using the arrow key that shows some of
the main file commands and we can move to other menus to see some of the different things
that are available in editor.
Editor is basically a simple word processing program.
You're probably familiar with word processing programs such as Word Perfect or Microsoft
Word.
Editor will create only simple text files and won't allow you to do any of the more
elaborate things that you can do with those other word processors.
To create a new document or a new text file, we choose the new command from the file menu.
Notice that it's already highlighted in the menu.
When it's highlighted, all we have to do is hit the enter key on the keyboard.
In this case, we could create a new text file simply by typing in now from the keyboard.
You could write a letter with Microsoft editor, but probably you'll use it more often for
things like creating batch files such as the auto exec batch file.
Let's go back to the file menu by hitting alt and now let's open up an existing file
from the disk.
We'll open up the auto exec file and show how to make some changes in that batch file
because a batch file is actually just a type of text file.
We highlight this open command then hit enter.
The open dialog box opens on the screen and the default is text, so it looks for all text
files contained within the current directory.
It uses the wild card to find all the files that have this extension.
It's only found one file, this is a letter text file that's been saved in the root directory.
We're going to look for batch files, specifically the auto exec batch file so we can make some
changes.
So we'll use the backspace and type in the BAT extension and then hit enter.
Now below it has found the auto exec batch file and we use the tab key to move down to
this and we hit the arrow key to select the files in here because there's only one file,
it just selects this first one.
Then we hit enter to bring that file up.
Notice it says loaded file is not saved.
It's talking about this letter that we started to create here on the screen.
It gives us a chance to save it or to not save it or to go back and finish it.
In this case we'll just choose yes or rather we'll choose no because we don't want to save
it.
So we'll use the tab key to move to the no and then hit enter.
So it didn't save the letter that we started and it loaded in the auto exec file, the batch
file that we need to make the changes in.
Editor works like many word processors that you're familiar with.
We have the cursor here.
We can move the cursor through the text using the arrow keys.
We can also use the backspace and the delete key as we do in any other word processor.
In addition we can do a few other features.
We can move text or copy text using the cut, copy and paste commands that you may be familiar
with from some word processors and to do this we have to select the text first.
We select text by positioning the cursor at the beginning of the text and we hit hold
down the shift key and move the cursor with the arrow key.
This selects the text and we select this first line and what we want to do with this line
is remove it.
We want to move it from one section to another.
We want to use cut and paste.
The cut and paste and copy and paste commands are found in the edit menu.
We use the alt key to activate the menus and the arrow key to open the menu and we have
cut, copy and paste.
We also have clear.
Notice that there are keyboard equivalents for these as well.
We don't necessarily have to use the menus.
We want to move the text that we've selected to a different location.
Let's use cut.
The cut, copy and paste commands use an area of memory called the clipboard.
When we cut something it's taken from the screen and placed in the clipboard so that
we can paste it somewhere else.
Copy does the same thing.
It puts it on the clipboard except it also leaves it in the document.
Let's use cut first.
Since it's already selected in the menu we'll just hit enter.
Notice it's now removed that line from the document.
Let's move our cursor down to this next line here and we'll hit enter to create a new line.
Now we'll use paste to paste that text back in again.
We hit alt, open the edit menu and move down to paste and hit enter.
That text has been taken from the clipboard area of memory and pasted into this location.
We can also use copy and paste in a similar way.
Let's choose this path command.
Hold down shift.
We select the text in this way.
Go back up to the edit menu and choose copy and hit enter.
That text is copied to the clipboard.
Notice it's still on the screen.
A copy of it has been placed in the clipboard area.
Then we will create a new line below by hitting enter and we'll go back up and choose paste
now.
Choose paste and hit enter.
Now what we're going to do here is create a path for a new directory called Lee.
We'll type in the C and the colon, backslash, and the name of the directory.
This creates a path just as the other paths that were created above.
Remember that the path command tells DOS where to find files.
When you type in the name of a file at the DOS prompt, like a program to run for instance,
it knows to look in all of these directories to find that particular file.
If you add a new directory, then you need to go back to your auto exec batch file and
type in the path to that directory so DOS can find your files.
If you don't have the path commands in your batch file, your auto exec file, then you'll
have to type in the path at the time that you try to run the program or execute the
file.
We've added this line in.
Now let's go look at some of the other features of MS-DOS editor.
In the search menu, we'll activate this by hitting alt and going over to search and hit
the down arrow.
We have three commands here.
We have find and repeat last find and change.
These allow us to search for a particular text in the document.
In the case of change, to change that text.
Then we'll just find all the locations of a particular word, say, or a particular letter.
Change will allow us to find every instance of a certain word or letter and change it.
What we're going to do is change all of the C characters in our batch file to D. We'll
assume that we've installed a new hard disk and we're calling it the D drive.
We're going to create a batch file that's similar, but it has Ds rather than Cs.
It'll be easy to do this using find and change.
Let's use find first just to show how it works.
We'll hit enter.
The find dialog box appears on the screen.
It's got the word Lee in here because this was the last word that we typed in.
It always puts in the last word that you typed, assuming that maybe that's what you want to
find.
We can backspace and remove this if we want to and type something else in.
For now, let's just show how this works by hitting enter, which is the same thing as
selecting okay.
It has highlighted this word in our document.
Again, we could have found any word.
Let's go back now to the search menu and we'll choose change.
We highlight it with the arrow key and hit enter.
The change dialog box appears and it still has this one selected because that's what
we did before.
Let's backspace and change this to the letter C and a colon just to make sure that we're
finding the C that refers to the disk drive.
We'll hit tab to go to the next line to select what to change to and let's put D colon here.
We can also choose match upper and lower case so it'll find the letter even if it's in lower
case.
We can also choose to find a whole word if we want to put Xs in these spaces.
We can find and verify, which means it'll find each C and ask us whether or not we want
to actually change it to D or we can just change all.
Let's choose change all.
The way we do that is to hit tab to go down here and select change all and then hit enter.
Change complete, dialog box comes up, we can look and see that the changes have been made.
All of the C colons have been changed to D colons throughout the entire document.
This is a quick way to make some changes and once we check to see they're done, we can
just click, we can just hit enter to choose okay.
Now that we've created a new file, something we've made some changes in our file, we can
save the changes to the disk using the save command from the file menu.
Hit the alt and arrow keys to open the file menu.
Now if we choose save, it will save the file with the same name that it already has or
if we choose save as it will give us the opportunity to save the file with a different name, possibly
to a different directory and so forth.
Remember that when a command has the three dots after it, it's going to open a dialog
box to ask you for some more information.
Since the save command doesn't have the three dots, it'll just go ahead and save it with
the same name that it already has in the same location.
Let's choose save as, we'll hit enter and in the save as dialog box, let's change the
name to identify this file so we'll be able to remember later on what it is.
Let's just put some Ds here, three Ds at the end of this for an extension and we could
change to a different directory or drive even if we wanted to, but let's just keep it in
the C drive and the root directory and since OK has the little white edges on it here,
that means when you hit enter, that's what will be performed.
You could move down to the cancel using the tab key or the help commands.
We'll just use shift tab and move back over to OK and hit enter.
Now the file is being saved on the disk with this name and we can call it up from the disk
later on.
Now finally, before we exit the MS-DOS editor, we'll show how to get help if we need help.
Over on the right side of the screen, there's a help menu right up in the upper right hand
corner and we can access this just as we do any other menu.
Hitting alt and using the arrow keys to move across, remember we can also use the first
letter that's highlighted, we could hit alt and then H. We use the arrow key to move to
open this help menu and it's got some files, a getting started file and a keyboard file
and a little file about the editor program.
Now moving back over to the left, in the file menu at the bottom, we have print and we could
print whatever file is on the screen.
Notice also that there are three dots afterward that will give you the, it will open a print
dialogue box that will allow you to choose any text file from the disk and print that
as well.
And then finally at the bottom, we have the exit command.
We select this with the arrow key and then hit enter and we exit back to the DOS prompt.
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