A question about DOS.

I am new to the whole DOS thing. A while back I saw someone use it to uncover every website, chat session, and email that someone had accessed on their computer. They typed in a few things and soon all this information filled the screen. I thought this was quite a neat trick. I have tried searching on google for ways to do this neat little trick, but I find nothing very useful to a less experienced user such as myself. I did, however, come across something that said to navigate to the "user.da0" and do an attrib on it and change the attributes. I don't want to change them. I just want to see what has been done. Can anyone give me some helpful hints as how to do so? I am using xp pro. Thanks.

 

DOS, or Disk Operating System was a very prominent Operating System in pre-windows days with early versions of Windows even running off DOS.
It could be abstractly (and not completely accurately) described as a single user, single process OS driven by the command line. I'm ignoring TSR's (Terminate and Stay Resident Prgramges) which were pretty horrendous from my experience.

So essentially what you saw someone did at their DOS prompt was launch either a batch file (a fairly primitive scripting mechanism for DOS - this would launch certain applications or DOS commands in a chain with some basic branching capability) or an application that sifted this data from files.

Which means that the answer to your problem lies not in DOS commands per se, but rather an application, or series of applications, which were able to extract usable data from this file and present it in a readable format.

Hope this helps...

 

Darn, I was hoping it wouldn't be so complicated. I better stick to the basics for now. Thank you very much.

 

It's not really very complicated.

Depending on the operating system, you can just read the index.dat file/s in notepad.

Even easier, download the freeware Super WinSpy and that will tell you most of the information like websites visited, emails sent, cookies downloaded, recent documents, search history etc.

 

Hey huhwhat,

Yeah, DOS was a pain in the butt for many reason, though many people enjoyed using it.

Most any operating system have a DOS prompt, or, rather, a "Command Prompt." (Because DOS stands for Disk Operating System, as Quick Silver noted, and because most all command prompts look and feel like you're using something like DOS, we all just got in the habit of refering to all command prompts as DOS prompts).

If you have Windows 98, for instance, you can go to Start, Run and "MS Dos Prompt" (I'm not sure what it is for Win XP). From here, you'll be taken to dark and sinister screen, the Dark Forebode of cryptic commands, switches, lines, dots and all kinds of other squigglies that are enough to drive most people out of their minds (which we're sure was Microsoft's original intent!).

Anyway, in this DOS screen you'll probably see something like C:\ That means you're at the C drive and at the very beginning of it (thus, you're not in, say, My Documents. Rather, you are at the "root" of the C drive). There's commands you can type that will switch directories, make directories, delete files, rename files...all sorts of neat things...stuff you would REALLY rather do in Windows! So, do some searching on Google for learning about DOS and see what you get.

You really don't need to be in DOS unless you are creating what are called "Batch Files." These are sets of instructions for automating a series of commands and tasks (like, go to the My Documents folder, copy such-and-such file, move it over here....etc.) so that you don't have to type it in every single time you want these things done. Windows did, and does, a HORRIBLE job of creating simple automatic jobs. As a matter of fact, it doesn't do anything like this. Oh, it will offer you the ability to back up a whole hard drive, but what if I only want to back up My Documents, a few other folders, and copy them to another folder, and do a few other things, all in one click of the mouse? Well, (sound of the gong in the back...) "You loooooose!" Windows just sucks for this kind of stuff.

So, now you're an expert on DOS, and...if you're smart...you'll get outta DOS at all costs!

Hope that helps,

Starkman