Checking the Web Site Speed

                          Taking too much time to access your favorite sites? Probably the problem is on the server used by those sites. To make sure that is the problem, use Windows PING facility. Ping is a small program, which sends a 32-bit signal to the Web site server. Next, Ping record the time needed by the server to answer it. To activate Ping:

                      Click on the Start-Run menus, type command, and then click OK. Type PING "site name" in the MS-DOS prompt window, for example PING www.yahoo.com.   In a moment, the result will appear on the screen. A result less than 300ms is normal speed while a result more than 400ms is slow speed.

                      If "Request timed out" message appears on the screen that means the Web site server is not responding in one second. Probably it happens because the server is too slow, or designed on purpose not to respond to the ping test, or you forgot to specify your name server addresses in the TCP/IP settings dialog box.

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Format.com Hidden Parameters

FORMAT drive: /AUTOTEST
Checks the existing format of your disk, and then proceeds with an unattended disk format.  It does not prompt for a volume label, it does not prompt to format another disk, no delay, no user intervention, ends without pausing, and displays disk space statistics after completion.

FORMAT drive: /BACKUP
This parameter works exactly like /AUTOTEST, but it does prompt the user for a volume label, and it does display disk space information upon completion.

FORMAT drive: /SELECT
This parameter is similar to using the MIRROR command (MS-DOS 5.0 and earlier only).

FORMAT drive: /U
This parameter performs an unconditional format, which destroys every byte of data on a disk by overwriting it with hex F6h. You cannot unformat a disk formatted using the /U option.

FORMAT drive: /SELECT /U
This particular combination of format.com parameters makes a disk. Do not use these two format switches together on any drive!

FORMAT drive: /Z:n
Formats a FAT32 drive with a cluster size of n times 512 bytes. Meaning:
drive: = your hard drive letter (C:, D:, E:... etc).
n = number of sectors per cluster multiplied by 512 (cluster size in bytes).
Examples:
n = 1    creates a 512 bytes cluster;
n = 2    creates a 1024 bytes (1 KB) cluster;
n = ?    creates a ? x 512 = ???? bytes (???? bytes : 1024 = ? KB) cluster.
You can modify the size of the allocation units (sectors) on a FAT32 drive to your heart's desire.

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Printing a Folder List

                       If you want to print a list of all files in a folder, and also list the files in the sub-folders which belong to the folder, add the /S switch to the command line in the MS DOS prompt:

dir c:\abcfiles\*.* /s > c:\abcfiles.txt

which not only lists the files and sub-folders in \abcfiles, but also continues to list the files in all the sub-folders. You can then read it using NotePad or WorPad if the file size getting bigger.

Bonus tip:
If you have Microsoft Outlook installed on your system, then you can get a better list. From the Outlook Bar, click on My Computer. If there is no shortcut to My Computer, you can create it by right click an empty Space in the Outlook Bar, choose Outlook Bar Shortcut, Look in – File system, and click OK. Now expand the folder and subfolder, which you want to print. Click on File – Print menu, adjust your page, and then print the result.

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Here's how to print several directories with lots of files and also print full details of the file, date size etc.  Open MS-DOS Command Prompt dialog box. Change to the C:\ root directory by typing in CD\ and then hit Enter. From the C:\ prompt type in DIR /S > DIRLIST.TXT and then hit Enter. That will give you a text document called DIRLIST.TXT which will contain all directories and all the files under each directory, including file sizes and dates. To print or edit the document, open it with Edit application (simply type EDIT DIRLIST.TXT and press Enter).

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