Windows 7 Command prompt

When I try to run things like ping, tracert and ipconfig from the DOS prompt its coming up as “‘ping’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.”
Same applies for other things too. I can get “dir” to bring up a directory listing though.
If I run cmd.exe as an admin it works fine, but not as a local user (I am an admin on the machine).

Any suggestions?

some functions are restricted to elevated privileges

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/command-prompt-frequently-asked-questions

http://superuser.com/questions/453409/how-can-i-always-run-the-command-prompt-as-administrator

Ping and tracert are standard user level commands, so shouldn’t need elevated privilages.

First check the commands are actually there (e.g. C:\windows\system32\ping.exe), then check that the paths variables haven’t been changed (System – advanced system settings – advanced – enviromental variables), and are pointing to the relavent places where these commands can be found e.g. %SystemRoot%\system32;

edited to add: missed the bit where you said it works in elevated mode… sorry!

check that the paths variables haven’t been changed

This.

Note that %systemroot% can get mangled; better to explicitly specify c:\windows\system32 rather than %systemroot%\system32.

Just to confirm, I used to be able to use them until recently. Now I can only use them if run as an administrator.

When you say “as an administrator” do you mean running cmd with elevated permissions, or with a different user account?

does sound like path is knack’d.

try this as your user account:

start run>cmd

cd c:\windows\system32
ping xyx.com

Cougar, selecting command and right clicking to run as an administrator.
As its fine when run from c:\windows\system32, but fails as unrecognised when run from c:\users\bigyinn
How do I fix the path?

Open up the system control panel, click on Advanced System Settings, go to the Advanced tab if needed, and click on the Enviromental Variables button.

Scroll down the list of System variables, until you see Path, click on it, then edit.

There’ll be a job lot of text, separated by semi-colons.

Here’s mine below:

C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86_64;C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86;C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\system32\wbem;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static; D:\crysis-2\bin32;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Shared;C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP

You’ll want to look for the %SystemRoot% entries, and modify them to C:\Windows\System32 (or whetherever your System 32 dir is) or if they’re not present, add them.

Click the image below to make it bigger…

Sweet!

That worked a treat, thanks dan!

Any idea why it might have been buggered up in the first place? I have found a couple of trojans on my machine following and overnight scan. Now gone. Will run another av scan tonight to make sure its clean.

‘s what I said. Mumblegrumblekidsoftoday…

Thanks for trying to help me Cougar! I just needed a little more instruction.