The Windows command line offers access to many useful tools ranging from file system control to networking. A switch you might not know about the cmd.exe tool is /k which keeps the command line window open after the command is run instead of closing it. This is useful for creating shortcuts to run command line tools.

For example, if you want to create a shortcut to ping a particular computer (such as your mail server) you would create a shortcut like so:

1. Right click on the desktop and select New > Shortcut.
2. For the location of the item, enter the command. In this case: cmd /k ping my.mailserver.com
3. Save your changes.

Now you just have to double-click on the shortcut to run a ping test on your server and the results window will stay open to allow you to review the results and/or run additional commands without having to open another command line window.