Home : Tutorials : Command Prompt : Command Prompt Networking

Troubleshooting network problems.

Some basic commands for now.

These commands are all issued from a Windows XP command prompt.

Click on Start --> Run and type 'cmd' and press Enter to access a command prompt.

ipconfig - Shows current configuration for network adapters. ipconfig /all will also work.

ping www.domain.com - Sends a signal to www.domain.com and waits for a response. This will give you the current number address for the domain you specified. The most common method of resolving a domain name to an IP address is called DNS. You can verify that DNS is working properly with this command.

tracert www.domain.com - Sends a signal and shows the hops it takes along the way. Hops are the jump to each router the information needs to pass through to makes it's way around the Internet. This will help identify slowdowns.

netsh diag gui - Runs Windows Help & Support Center based network diagnostics. Test email settings & get network info.

netsh diag show test - Runs a series of network tests on your computer and sends the results to the screen.

netsh diag show test > c:\diag.txt - Runs a series of network tests on your computer and sends the results to a file called c:\diag.txt for emailing, viewing or printing.

netsh diag ping dhcp - Tests the availability of your current DHCP servers.

netsh diag connect mail - Display & test Outlook Express mail settings.

netsh diag connect ieproxy - Connect to & test the configured proxy server for Internet Explorer.

netsh diag show adapter - List configured network adapters and their index numbers. You can specifically refer to network adapters by the index number without the leading zeros instead of the name. ie. netsh diag ping dhcp 1 would override the command displaying all my configured DHCP servers & show only the DHCP setting for the adapter specified.

netsh diag show ip - Displays the current IP addresses for all currently configured network adapters and the adapter index. Add the adapter index number, without the zeros, to the end of this command to get the IP address for that adapter only.

netsh diag show ieproxy - Display configured proxy settings for Microsoft Internet Explorer.

netsh firewall show all - Displays configured Windows Firewall settings & exceptions.

netsh firewall show help - Displays a list of options to view information about the Windows Firewall.

net use m: \\cpq\g$ /persistent:yes - Create a drive letter (M:) from the network location \\cpq\g$ that will try to connect again at next logon.

rasdial internet - Connect to your Internet connection from the command prompt. Replace the internet with the name of your Dial-up or VPN connection from Explorer.

Advanced:

Most of these command can be used with ' > c:\file.txt' added to the end of the command to have their results written to a new text file called c:\file.txt. The path & filename used are for you to choose. Use '>>' instead of '>' to append to an existing file.

example:

First type 'dir "c:\Program Files" > c:\dir.txt' and press Enter.

This will create a file called c:\dir.txt listing all the files and directories in c:\Program Files.

When typing these commands you must use the " but not the ' . You need to enclose long filenames in " (quotation mark) for the commands to be valid.

Next type 'dir c:\Windows >> c:\dir.txt' and press Enter.

This will append the results of the second command to the file c:\dir.txt. This file should have already been created with the results from the first command. Using '>>' will still create the file if it doesn't already exist.