command prompt question (vista)

somewhat strange issue: when I try to use commands in my cmd prompt (ipconfig or tracert, for example), they won't work. i can get them to work, but i have to change the current directory to the folder in which the utilities themselves are located.

so like, if i type cd C:\Windows\System32 and then ipconfig, it will work. This should not, under normal circumstances, be necessary. Any thoughts?

EDIT: a few months ago, I was messing around with java a bit, and in order to issue the compiler commands from my cmd prompt window, I had to add/edit PATH variables in my environmental variables. Could this be related?

 

You probably borked your path. Go to cmd and type echo %PATH%

I'm guessing you removed C:\Windows, C:\Windows\system32, etc, and will be wanting those back.

Start Menu > Computer (right-click) > Properties > Advanced System Settings (left-hand bar) > Environment Variables, edit your Path. Use semicolons as the delimiter.

 

I added those back in to the path variable under system variables and that did the trick. thanks a lot.

The only thing which seems weird to me is that I remember editing this variable back at the time. All I did was ad the file path for the compiler..never removed anything. Not sure what the story is then. Thanks a lot anyway though. Take some rep.

 

hmm might be your removed the delimiter (semicolons)

 

You may have overwritten the entire PATH variable in that case, so that the only thing in your PATH variable was the path for the compiler.