Five Useful Windows Commands For System Admins

1.) WMIC command : Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line

With WMIC, administrators can access all kinds of detailed information about the machine. WMIC is built into Windows XP Pro, Windows 2003, and Windows Vista.

Type: WMIC /? on your command prompt for listing on how to use it.

e.g. C:\> wmic process If you type in ‘wmic process’ it will list out all the process files that are currently running in your system.

2.) NET command : Administrators can use this to display all kinds of useful information.

e.g. net user username /domain will display the user’s domain information

3.) Openfiles command : Shows all open files running on the machine

e.g. openfiles /local on <– this will enable the openfiles command and require a system reboot
After reboot, type in openfiles /query /v <– this will show you all the openfiles and the username that it was run under

4.) Netstat command: shows network activity and information

e.g. netstat -a <– show all listening ports

5.) Find command: search on screen information

e.g. netstat -a | find “8080”