How to: Run Dialogue

This guide is going to cover the basics on the run dialogue box and some of the commands often used.

The Run Dialogue box has been used by people for a very long time, people who are fast with a keyboard and have a logical memory will find that the Run Dialogue box extremely helpful, but it also has it's advantages to the less-computer-literate people.

There are many ways to access the Run Dialogue box. The easiest is by holding the windows key + pressing R. You can also access it on vista by typing run into the quick-search bar, or on XP and previous via the start menu and clicking the Run tab.
(it is possible to add the Run... icon to the Vista menu, but it's doesn't come like that originally.)

This is what the Run Dialogue box looks like:


From here you can access many programs via simply typing it's name or location into the Dialogue box.

For example, try these few:

Code:

mspaint
cmd
%temp%
.
notepad

As you may have noticed, you can normally see what the program will be just by it's name.

Mspaint obviously opens Microsoft Paint, and notepad will open Notepad. But then they start getting a bit more complicated. For example, the Command Prompt is abbreviate to cmd, your temporary folders are wrapped in %'s and the user directory is a full stop.

You may be wondering now what the point of the Run Dialogue box is, as you can open them without much effort anyway. The answer is to save time. Once you can type the commands you need without much thought you can make your time a lot more efficient. For example, you need a screenshot of your home page, Windows + R, firefox, prtscrn, Windows + R, mspaint, ctrl + v, ctrl + s.
(Please note, lame example)

If you search Google for Run commands, it will reply with a load of results, and if you search around you will find a load of results, but here are my favorite.

Please appreciate this isn't 1% of the possible commands, and there are lots more you may find useful.


Last of all could you please not reply telling me the commands you use, because it is a waste of a post and if you really think it's that important, PM me and if it's worth it, I will add it to the list. And consider the fact that because you know something, it doesn't mean the rest of the community does.

Thanks for reading.

 

Not saying what I use (I don't use windows) but all of the commands you can run in the "Run Dialogue" can be found in the System32 folder.

If you browse through that folder, you'll find like, tons of executables that you can use + run from the Run Dialogue.

 

Thanks cp_. I will add that later

 

Not bad but if you could google it and find more would be cool...

Some others I use that arent in there are

winword (msword)
systray (restart your system tray - where the clock is- useful if ur sound stopped working)
msconfig - through where you could change startup programs to speed up start up time