NirCMD: Command-line Swiss army knife for Windows

Many of the commands are things you might have available in other quick-and-dirty command-line utilities, but NirCmd lets you replace many of them in one package.

NirCmd's syntax is simple enough—nircmd, followed by a number of arguments that describe what to do and how to do it. For instance, nircmd standby puts the system into standby mode; nircmd win min class "IEFrame" minimizes all Internet Explorer windows.

The exact syntax for each command is spelled out in detail in the documentation. (Note: If you get into the habit of using NirCmd from the command line for many things, you can alwa

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ys rename it something shorter like ni to save yourself that many more keystrokes.)

Here's a sampling of the commands available within NirCMD:

The 2.0 version insures that many of the commands, including audio controls, work properly in Windows Vista, and includes many new functions (such as the dialog-box commands).

About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of the Windows Insight, (formerly the Windows Power Users Newsletter), a blog site devoted to hints, tips, tricks and news for users and administrators of Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Vista. He has more than 12 years of Windows experience under his belt, and contributes regularly to SearchWinComputing.com and SearchSQLServer.com.

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