Hkey_local_machine Software Microsoft Command Processor

[Sourabh Doherty]

Layoutgets the personalised touch too, I max out the screen buffer height and if you have ever spent a whole day doing stuff in the prompt and you need to scroll back a few hours to check the output of a previous command then this is essential.

Finally I change the colours. The default light grey on black do cause a fair amount of eye strain for the slightly vision impaired and frankly looks quite dull. My personal preference is Yellow on Dark Blue, it provides good contrast and the Blue background is a nice colour to work with, as we associate this colour with calmness (always a good thing to keep calm while prompting)

I can not tell you how many times in my IT career I have modified the default values of the cmd.exe processor to suit my needs. Pretty much every windows platform I log into immediately gets the command prompt changes, open Command prompt, right click top left corner > properties, enable quick edit mode, change font and background colours, enlarge the screen buffer and window sizes etc. There has to be an easier way to tailor the prompt for my needs right?

Command Extensions are enabled by default. You may also disable extensions for a particular invocation by using the /E:OFF switch. You can enable or disable extensions for all invocations of CMD.EXE on a machine and/or user logon session by setting either or both of the following REG_DWORD values in the registry using REGEDIT.EXE:

Delayed environment variable expansion is NOT enabled by default. You can enable or disable delayed environment variable expansion for a particular invocation of CMD.EXE with the /V:ON or /V:OFF switch. You can enable or disable delayed expansion for all invocations of CMD.EXE on machine and/or user logon session by setting either or both of the following REG_DWORD values in the registry using REGEDIT.EXE:

You can enable or disable file name completion for a particular invocation of CMD.EXE with the /F:ON or /F:OFF switch. You can enable or disable completion for all invocations of CMD.EXE on a machine and/or user logon session by setting either or both of the following REG_DWORD values in the registry using REGEDIT.EXE:

with the hex value of a control character to use for a particular function (e.g. 0x4 is Ctrl-D and 0x6 is Ctrl-F). The user specific settings take precedence over the machine settings. The command line switches take precedence over the registry settings.

If completion is enabled with the /F:ON switch, the two control characters used are Ctrl-D for directory name completion and Ctrl-F for file name completion. To disable a particular completion character in the registry, use the value for space (0x20) as it is not a valid control character.

Completion is invoked when you type either of the two control characters. The completion function takes the path string to the left of the cursor appends a wild card character to it if none is already present and builds up a list of paths that match. It then displays the first matching path. If no paths match, it just beeps and leaves the display alone. Thereafter, repeated pressing of the same control character will cycle through the list of matching paths. Pressing the Shift key with the control character will move through the list backwards. If you edit the line in any way and press the control character again, the saved list of matching paths is discarded and a new one generated. The same occurs if you switch between file and directory name completion. The only difference between the two control characters is the file completion character matches both file and directory names, while the directory completion character only matches directory names. If file completion is used on any of the built in directory commands (CD, MD or RD) then directory completion is assumed.

The completion code deals correctly with file names that contain spaces or other special characters by placing quotes around the matching path. Also, if you back up, then invoke completion from within a line, the text to the right of the cursor at the point completion was invoked is discarded.

For reference, here are the commands you can use to change the values programmatically. Open a command prompt and execute each line (TIP: cmdexe allows you to select the entire block and paste in one go, as the carriage return at the end of each line will execute the command) close and re-open the prompt and et voila. Note you could even set this up as a GPO to apply these settings via registry modification and substituting HKEY_CURRENT_USER for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE will set these values as default (Must run the initial command prompt as an administrator though)

One thing I like to do is colour code my console based on the level of access that I have. For example when running a command prompt as an account with Schema Admin rights, I use a red background to indicate that that this cmd prompt has the potential do bad bad things.

The current platform is Java SE 6. Regularly scheduled updates to this release contain fixes for a set of critical bugs identified since the initial release of the platform. When an update release becomes available, it becomes the default download at the Java SE Downloads site.

The download site includes release notes that list the bug fixes in the release. Each bug in the list is linked to the bug description in the bug database. The release notes also include the list of fixes in previous update releases. If you encounter an issue, or suspect a bug, then, as an early step in the diagnosis, check the list of fixes that are available in the most recent update release.

The bug database is located at If you conclude that the bug has not already been reported, submit a new bug.Before submitting a bug, verify that the environment where the problem arises is a supported configuration. See the Supported System Configurations site.

In general it is recommended to collect as much relevant data as possible when you create a bug report or submit a support call. This section suggests the data to collect and, where applicable, it provides recommendations for the commands or general procedure for obtaining the data.

Sometimes a bug arises or can be reproduced only on certain hardware configurations. If a fatal error occurs, the error log might contain the hardware details. If an error log is not available, document in the bug report the number and the type of processors in the machine, the clock speed, and, where applicable and if known, some details on the features of that processor. For example, in the case of Intel processors, it might be relevant that hyper-threading is available.

On Linux, it is important to know which distribution and version is used. Sometimes the /etc/*release file indicates the release information, but as components and packages can be upgraded independently, it is not always a reliable indication of the configuration. Therefore, in addition to the information from the *release file, collect the following information:

Multiple versions of Java SE may be installed on the same machine. Therefore, ensure that you use the appropriate version of the java command by verifying that the installation bin directory appears in your PATH environment variable before other installations.

If the bug report does not include a fatal error log, it is important to document the full command line and all its options. This includes any options that specify heap settings (for example, the -mx option ) or any -XX options that specify HotSpot specific options.

One of the features in Java SE is garbage collector ergonomics. On server-class machines the java command launches the HotSpot Server VM and a parallel garbage collector. A machine is considered to be a server machine if it has at least two processors and 2GB or more of memory.

The -XX:+PrintCommandLineFlags option can be used to verify the command-line options. This option prints all command-line flags to the VM. The command-line options can also be obtained for a running VM or core file using the jmap utility.

When creating a problem description, try to include as much relevant information as possible. Describe the application, the environment, and most importantly the events leading up to the time when the problem was encountered.

Sometimes the problem can be reproduced only in a complex application environment. In this case, the description, coupled with logs, core file, and other relevant information, might be the sole means to diagnose the issue. In these situations the description should indicate if the submitter is willing to run further diagnosis or run test binaries on the system where the issue arises.

In the case of a deadlock or a hung VM (for example, due to a loop) the thread stacks can help diagnose the problem. The thread stacks are obtained using Ctrl-\ on Solaris OS and Linux and Ctrl-Break on the Windows operating system.

For example, if the problem is a crash and the application has native libraries, you might have already run the application with the -Xcheck:jni option to reduce the likelihood that the bug is in the native code. Another case could be a crash that occurs with the HotSpot Server VM ( -server option). If you have also tested with the HotSpot Client VM ( -client option) and the problem does not occur, this gives an indication that the bug might be specific to the HotSpot Server VM.

This section explains how to generate and collect core dumps (also known as crash dumps). A core dump or a crash dump is a memory snapshot of a running process. A core dump can be automatically created by the operating system when a fatal or unhandled error (for example, signal or system exception) occurs. Alternatively, a core dump can be forced by means of system-provided command-line utilities. Sometimes a core dump is useful when diagnosing a process that appears to be hung; the core dump may reveal information about the cause of the hang.

Core dumps do not usually contain all the memory pages of the crashed or hung process. With each of the operating systems discussed here, the text (or code) pages of the process are not included in core dumps. But to be useful, a core dump must consist of pages of heap and stack as a minimum. Collecting non-truncated good core dump files is essential for postmortem analysis of the crash.

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