Introduction Thanks for buying Windows 7 Portable Command Guide. I'd love to say that this book was my idea, but the real credit goes to Scott Empson, who originally developed the vision of this book with Cisco certifications. I've worked with Scott and Pearson Publishing to help bring the same type of books he created for Cisco products to profes- sionals working on Microsoft products. Scott's vision started with the idea that many IT professionals who have already learned the theory still sometimes need help remember- ing how to implement it. The book doesn't go into depth teaching these concepts. The idea is that you already understand them. Instead, the goal is to provide enough information to help you remember what you can do and how to do it in a small, portable, and useful journal, not an encyclopedic-sized volume. However, even if a concept is new to you, there's enough information for you to start typing at the command prompt to gain a better understanding. As an example, you probably know that you can refresh Group Policy from the com- mand prompt, but you might not always remember the exact command is gpupdate/ force. You might remember that sysprep is used to prepare a computer for imaging, but you might not always remember that the full command is sysprep/oobe/generalize. In other words, you know the theory behind why you'd update Group Policy, and why you'd run sysprep, but you might not always remember the syntax. This book is a ready reference of useful commands and procedures with clear-cut examples. It shows the exact syntax of many of the commands needed for administrative tasks performed regu- larly by Windows 7 administrators. I started the outline of this book by ensuring that command-prompt commands covered by the Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional (MCITP) certifica- tions on Windows 7 were included. This includes the 70-680 and 70-685 exams for the MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Support Technician 7 certification, and the 70-680 and 70-686 exams for the MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator 7 certification. I then added the commands I've found valuable in my day-to-day work on networks and from classroom teaching. Many IT professionals use an engineering journal to help them remember key informa- tion needed on the job. It might include specific commands that they sometimes forget, IP addressing schemes used on their networks, steps for important maintenance tasks that are performed infrequently, or anything else they want to easily recall by looking at