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When I open an elevated command prompt I am greeted with a strange first line. Instead of the normal:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\ 

I am greeted with

C:\WINDOWS\system32> 

This leaves me with "greater-than" > symbol instead of a backslash \. Is this correct?

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  • 1
    Do you just want to set your prompt to $P\ instead of $P$G? Or is there some other problem beyond the cosmetic one?
    – dsolimano
    May 3, 2012 at 1:52
  • 1
    The default prompt ends with a > and has since DOS times.
    – Dennis
    May 3, 2012 at 1:58
  • what are DOS times? and I can not understand how to make commands. I need to make the command *C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc* but I cant with the >
    – destiny
    May 3, 2012 at 2:01
  • DOS times means since DOS was the main OS. The '>' shouldn't affect you, it's just cosmetic. And that's not a command, that's a directory. Are you trying to change to that directory? Are you trying to edit a file in that directory?
    – dsolimano
    May 3, 2012 at 2:03
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    @Destiny C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc is not a command. Once you open the cmd prompt as admin, type "cd drivers" without the quotes and hit enter. Then, type "cd etc" without the quotes and hit enter, and you will be in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
    – Bon Gart
    May 3, 2012 at 2:08

2 Answers 2

4

The command prompt ending with a > seems to be normal. example 1

Example 2

Example 3

I can add more, but those are just random Windows 7 command prompt images I dug up with google.

When I open cmd on W7, it ends with >. When I open it as admin, it ends with >. When I open cmd on XP, it ends with >.

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  • yes but i can't make any commands !
    – destiny
    May 3, 2012 at 2:00
  • @destiny: What exactly are you trying to do?
    – Dennis
    May 3, 2012 at 2:05
  • 1
    Do you really want to put your install key on the internet? ;p
    – Journeyman Geek
    May 3, 2012 at 4:01
  • It's not my install key. I just found the image in a google search. That said... I'm sure that it was NOT a good idea for that person to put that image up.
    – Bon Gart
    May 3, 2012 at 18:15
1

From the comments, it seems you are trying to execute a command (program, executable) under C:\WINDOWS\system32\. What you are seeing is the prompt, and it shows you the current directory. In Windows, you can run commands in the current directory simply by typing the name, e.g. .\drivers\etc.

By the way, if the command you are trying to run is directly under system32 (so ...\system32\notepad, but not ...\system32\drivers\etc), you can just type the name of the command no matter what your current directory is, e.g. notepad. This is because C:\Windows\system32\ is in your %PATH%.

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