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System Commands problem in Command Prompt

(Added: September 28, 2006)






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• When you type a System Command (i.e. chkdsk) in Command's Prompt window (cmd.exe), you are receiving the following message:

'SystemCommand' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Reason which causes the problem:

- This is a 90% possibility of a PATH environment variable problem.

SOLUTION:
  • Open a command prompt and type "path" (no quotes). You will see PATH= followed by a list of directories separated with semicolons. Is c:\windows\system32 (or Windows_Path\system32) there?
  • If not, go to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment variables. Scroll the 'system variables' to find PATH, select it and click Edit. Copy its contents to a Notepad window (it's much harder to edit a very long string in that little box).
  • When Windows firstly installed that variable is:

    %SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem

  • Put the above variable at the beginning, and add at the end a semicolon ";" (no quotes) if there are other applications' paths there. Delete it from anywhere else (if it exists). Copy from Notepad and Paste it back to the little box > click OK twice. You will need to restart running applications to apply the new path to them (not the system).