Now, I don’t know if they were impressed or not, but this tinkering with cmd, turn out quite beneficial to me. I started reading tech blogs and implement whatever I learned, on my computer. Fast forward few years, I started my own websites and today, we are running TechWiser as a Tech Media company. So yes, cmd has a special place in my heart. It triggered the inner geek me. And it might do the same for you. Now, even if you don’t want to be a tech blogger, you will definitely learn something useful from cmd. But before that, you need to know how to open cmd. Right? So here are different ways to open cmd.

1. Open Command Prompt from Start Menu

Press the Windows key to open the start menu and the type in ‘cmd’ and hit Enter key. To launch cmd as admin, press Ctrl + Shift + Enter.

If you are on Window 10, then you can also launch a command prompt from the power menu. Press ‘Win + X’ key and select command prompt from the menu. This way is much quicker.

2. Open cmd from the RUN box

Press ‘Win + R’ key to open RUN dialog box. Then type cmd and hit enter.

If you open cmd frequently for a single command like to check your internet connectivity using ping. Then instead of opening the cmd window and then typing your command, directly execute it through Run box. The advantage of that is, first it’s quick and second, RUN box stores the history. So next time you want to run the same command, press ‘WIN + R’ key to open run, then use UP/DOWN arrow key to find that from history and hit enter. Save a lot of time.

3. Open cmd from the Windows File Explorer

To open cmd in a specific directory, open file explorer (Win + E), go to the directory where you want to open cmd, next click on the file > Open command prompt. This will open cmd in the current directory. No need to you use the cd command.

You can also do this, by holding your shift key and right click on empty space. From the right-click menu select, open command window here.

4. Open Command Prompt from Task Manager

If you have Task Manager already open, then you can run cmd directly from it. Go to File > Run New Task > type in ‘cmd’ > and hit enter.