Note: the advice below are not very interesting. You should use the Powertoys (Windows 95/98) or the Windows Resource Kit (NT/2000), which do the same and much more. Thanks to TallRoo and Shannara256 for notifying me about that.
In Windows, it is much easier to navigate in the Explorer than in a
DOS window (although this is an oxymoron). Therefore, the easiest way
to use a DOS prompt in a directory is to go to that directory in the
Explorer, then right-click to open a DOS prompt there. Unfortunately, the
OS was not designed to facilitate the life of the user, so there is no
such entry in the right-click menu by default. Here is a way to add it.
Of course, this will only interest Windows users. And Use at
your own risk, of course.
- Go to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell node in the
registry (note that Folder includes drives and directories).
- Create a new key (from the right-click menu), and call it "DOS prompt".
- Under that new key, create a sub-key named "command".
- Under that new key (i.e under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\DOS prompt\command), edit the (Default) String value and give it the following value:
"c:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe %1" (or whatever the path to cmd.exe is
on your system).
- Now, you can open a DOS window by right-clicking on any directory name in the Windows explorer.