Windows 2000 Commands Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))

Windows administrators can accomplish many of their routine tasks much more quickly by using the command line (similar to the command line of DOS or Unix-based systems) than by going through the graphical user interface that most users associate with Windows. Windows 20000 Commands Pocket Reference documents the Windows command mode. It's designed for system administrators, but will also be valuable to many users. It includes most available Windows 2000 commands, as well as the most useful system administration command-line utilities from the Resource Kit. Weeded out of this book are Windows commands and command options that are obscure, obsolete, broken, unacceptably insecure, or frankly inadvisable, as well a few special-purpose classes of commands. Whenever several utilities perform essentially identical tasks, we include only the best of them. Commands are grouped according to their purpose and function; within a group, commands are arranged alphabetically. Options for each command are grouped by function and ordered by importance. The Windows 2000 Commands Pocket Reference complements Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell by conveying the kind of no-nonsense, boiled-down information typical of O'Reilly's highly successful companion Pocket Reference series. It's a valuable, concise reference to Windows 2000 commands and command-line utilities.

Windows 2000 Commands Pocket Reference fully documents the Windows 2000 console interface (that is, the complete set of command-line instructions the operating system understands). With coverage of Windows 2000 in its out-of-the-box form as well as of the operating system with the Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit installed, this book will prove invaluable to system administrators writing batch files to automate work. It also will please those power users and administrators wishing to learn how to do work faster than Windows 2000's graphical user interface (GUI) will allow.

This book represents the first published foray into Windows 2000 by Æleen Frisch, whose work on Essential Windows NT System Administration is highly regarded. Frisch doesn't disappoint, having apparently put into this tiny booklet the same care and attention to accuracy that characterizes her work on Windows 2000's predecessor. With a glance at any command's entry (the entries appear in alphabetical order), the reader can determine what the command is for, what its generic syntax is, what each option and argument means, and whether the command works only with the resource kit installed. Future editions will be better if they include statements of function in their indexes in addition to command names (e.g., the task "trace IP path" in addition to the command "tracert"), but what's here is extremely valuable. --David Wall

Topics covered: All commands supported by the Windows 2000 console interface (a.k.a. the command line), with and without the resource kit installed. This is unadorned, man-page-style syntax and usage documentation.