• Run ‘command prompt’
• Browse to the location of the files using ‘cd’ command

<drive letter (e.g. D)>: 
cd <location of file (e.g. temp\video)>

• Enter the following command to copy to the desired location

xcopy /c <filename> <location>

<filename> either mention the filename with extension (e.g. doc1.txt) or to copy all files in that folder use *.* for filename
<location> enter the location where the files has to be copied (e.g. C: , C:\files\)

• The files may or may not be 100% recovered.

This is a very common error when you try to execute commands requiring administrator privileges. The simplest solution is to run command prompt in administrator mode.

How to Run ‘command prompt’ in administrator mode?

• Right Click on ‘command prompt’ and select ‘Run as administrator’
  
• User Account Control will prompted for confirmation
• Click on ‘continue’ and command prompt will start in administrator mode

or

• Type ‘cmd’ in Windows Vista search bar
  
• Press ‘Ctrl+Shift+Enter’
• User Account Control will prompted for confirmation
• Click on ‘continue’ and command prompt will start in administrator mode

All of this is possible with the TaskKill command. First, let’s cover the basics. You can kill a process by the process ID (PID) or by image name (EXE filename).

Open up an Administrative level Command Prompt and run tasklist to see all of the running processes:

C:\>tasklist

Image Name————PID——Session Name——Mem Usage
===========================================================
firefox.exe—————-26356——Console———-139,352 K
regedit.exe—————24244——Console————-9,768 K
cmd.exe——————18664——Console————-2,380 K
notepad.exe————–17364——Console————-7,892 K
notepad.exe————–24696——Console———–22,028 K
notepad.exe————–25304——Console————-5,852 K
explorer.exe—————2864——-Console———–72,232 K

In the example above you can see the image name and the PID for each process. If you want to kill the firefox process run:

C:\>Taskkill /IM firefox.exe /F

or

C:\>Taskkill /PID 26356 /F

The /f flag is kills the process forcefully. Failure to use the /F flag will result in nothing happening in some cases. One example is whenever I want to kill the explorer.exe process I have to use the /F flag or else the process just does not terminate.

If you have multiple instances of an image open such as multiple firefox.exe processes, running the taskkill
/IM firefox.exe command will kill all instances. When you specify the PID only the specific instane of firefox will be terminated.

The real power of taskkill are the filtering options that allow you to use the following variables and operators.

Variables:

STATUS
IMAGENAME
PID
SESSION
CPUTIME
MEMUSAGE
USERNAME
MODULES
SERVICES
WINDOWTITLE

Operators:

eq (equals)
ne (not equal)
gt (greater than)
lt (less than)
ge (greater than or equal)
le (less than or equal)
“*” is the wildcard.

You can use the variables and operators with the /FI filtering flag. For example, let’s say you want to end all processes that have a window title that starts with “Internet”:

C:\>taskkill /FI “WINDOWTITLE eq Internet*” /F
How about killing all processes running under the your username(savio) account:

C:\>taskkill /FI “USERNAME eq savio” /F
It is also possible to kill a process running on a remote computer with taskkill. Just run the following to kill notepad.exe on a remote computer called Savio:

C:\>taskkill /S Savio /U RemoteAccountName /P RemoteAccountPassword /IM notepad.exe /F
To learn more about taskkill run it with the /? command just like any other Windows command.

How to Use

• Goto ‘Start–>Run’.
• Type ‘cmd’ and press enter to open ‘command prompt’.
• Type ‘systeminfo’ and press enter.

Details about the following will be shown:

• OS Name ,OS Version,OS Manufacturer, OS Build
• Registered Owner, Registered Organization
• Product ID, Original Install Date
• System Up Time
• System Manufacturer, System Model, System Type, Processor(s), BIOS Version
• Windows Directory, System Directory, Boot Device
• System Locale, Input Locale, Time Zone
• Total Physical Memory, Available Physical Memory
• Virtual Memory: Max Size, Virtual Memory: Available, Virtual Memory: In Use
• Page File Location(s)
• Domain, Logon Server
• Hotfix(s)
• Network Card(s)

Note:

• It has been tested to work on Windows XP.
• If some one has tried it on Windows Vista and has worked, then please send us an email.

For any query please send email to saurabh(at)techwhiz(dot)in