Most command line utilities have a very specific purpose and task which they complete. As you probably know, these utilities make automation possible so tasks can be scheduled without any intervention on your part. Of course another great use for command line utilities is the ability to create shortcuts to do tasks (as opposed to digging through menus), so that a simple double-click of an icon on your desktop does a task.

A great utility for doing ‘odd jobs’ on your computer is NirCmd. Using NirCmd you can easily create shortcuts to do everything from adjusting your volume to shutting down your computer. While there are probably individual Windows commands you can hunt down which do most everything NirCmd can do, the convenience here is that there is a reference (on the NirCmd page) for many of these tasks in on a single page.

While a lot of the commands I couldn’t really think of a use for (such as opening the CD drive), a lot of them I can see having a use (such as clicking ‘Yes’ on a message box) in batch files.