LeeTutor's Doing Windows

Home Page

Doing Windows

Windows Tips Categories

MS-DOS Tips

WINDOWS 95 DOS "START" COMMAND

You're aware, aren't you, that when you upgraded to Windows 95 you also upgraded your version of MS-DOS to 7.0? One of the new commands available in this version is "START". It is supported only in MS-DOS sessions. What it does is allow you to start a DOS or Windows program from the command line. Thus, if you're in the MS-DOS Prompt, having done some renaming of multiple files or changing of their file attributes (which can only be done in DOS), then you want to start up the Windows 95 WordPad accessory, just type in "start wordpad"; you are immediately back in Windows running WordPad. If you use the optional command parameter "/w", then after WordPad is exited, you are back in the DOS session waiting for you to type in another DOS command. You can use this "start [/w]" command in a batch file also. Thus you could create a batch file like this to use WordPad to edit a file called book.doc and then immediately back it up to a floppy after you exit WordPad:

start /w wordpad book.doc
copy book.doc a: