How to boot windows command prompt from USB

Question

I want to boot cmd.exe from a USB or boot disk. How would I go about doing this? I would prefer not to used something like MS-DOS as it is extremely outdated. I'm running 7, if it matters.

Solution

cmd.exe is a Windows application and cannot be used as a stand alone shell. A good alternative is FreeDOS. There is also a USB bootable version. A better alternative is any Linux distribution.

If you really want cmd.exe then you can reboot in safe mode and choose the command prompt option. This only works when you have a full Win 7 installation on the machine though. Otherwise, you can do the same from an Win 7 install disk. These options will both actually be running cmd.exe on top of the Windows kernel though.

Comments

[barlop]

Nowadays people may use a WinPE e.g. BartPE, then open a command prompt from there. So booting Windows off boot media, could be off USB, then open a command prompt. But also you can boot into windows recovery and open a command prompt by hitting F8 twice - once to get the normal F8 menu and again for extra options. There is also UBCD and UBCD4WIN