CMD.EXE vs. COMMAND.COM

[Jeffrey N. Solomon]

Quick question: What's the difference between COMMAND.COM and CMD.EXE? I
first thought that COMMAND.COM was just a stub that called CMD.EXE for
compatibility purposes, but COMMAND.COM's description in the resulting DOS
box is Windows NT DOS while CMD.EXE claims it's just Windows NT. To point
out an additional difference, a COMMAND.COM window can't be closed by
clicking on the close button (a cannot respond to end task message appears
when you try), while CMD.EXE can. Thanks in advance for help on this
trivial issue!

-Jeff Solomon

[Chami]

COMMAND.COM is closer to DOS/Win95's COMMAND.COM, while CMD.EXE is Windows
NT's default command prompt. for example, autoexec.nt and config.nt will be
loaded when you run COMMAND.COM but not CMD.EXE.

--
http://www.ChamisPlace.com/tips/
3 new Daily Tips (Internet, Windows, Programming, ...),
FrontPage and Information Server Tools, ...

Jeffrey N. Solomon <jns...@is4.nyu.edu> wrote in article
<01bbd4d4$e49b0320$a8d17a80@jns4100>...

[dave porter]

Chami <7222...@compuserve.com> wrote in article
<01bbd4e3$96c79eb0$822a69ce@hpxu>...

The point about which many people are confused is that, on Win NT, a
command prompt is not a DOS box (even though Microsoft, in their
stupidity, use an icon which says "MS-DOS"). The NT command prompt,
CMD.EXE, is a 32-bit program, which just happens to have a text-style
interface rather than a gooey interface.

When you run any 16-bit command-line program, THEN you'll get a
program running in a DOS box (aka Virtual Dos Machine), though it
will by default be doing output to the same console window. One program
you might run is COMMAND.COM, which is basically the command shell from
MS-DOS (V5, I think). About the only reason you'd want to run this
is for a higher level of DOS compatibility than you get from CMD.EXE.