All Your Command (CMD) Prompts Are Belong To Us

Ever typed SET to display all the useful environment variables windows has?

You can add those environment variables to your command prompt permanently. And No, Billy, this won't work by simply editing System Properties, so read on...

Four files and the PSEXEC.EXE utility are needed - save all 4 files in the same directory in a share(such as \\server\share ) to prepare to deploy your groovy command prompt on every server under your influence.

I changed the command prompt to better keep track of which server and which credentials are in use, and added a timestamp.

CMDPROMPT.BAT - contains the prompt with your preferred environment variables and gets copied to %windir%

:: c:\windows\cmdprompt.bat
@echo off
prompt $_[%ComputerName%\%Username%] $t$_$p$g

CMDPROMPT.REG - get registered on the target machine(s) to invoke CMDPROMPT.BAT when CMD.EXE is executed

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor]
"AutoRun"="%windir%\\cmdprompt.bat"

CMDPROMPT-INSTALL.CMD - the installer script - important for deploying the prompt to multiple machines

:: \\server\share\cmdprompt-install.cmd
@echo off
copy /Y \\server\share\cmdprompt.??? %windir%\
regedit /s %windir%\cmdprompt.reg

SERVERLIST.TXT - a list of target machines(one per line) that will receive the newly minted command prompt goodness.

Eriador
Gondor
GreyHavens
Minastirith
Mordor
Rivendell
Rohan
Bullwinkle
Rocky
Elaine
George
Jerry
Challenger
Cubs
Hindenburg
SpruceGoose
Titanic
TowerofPiza

Now to install! Open up a command prompt and cd to the directory containing the SERVERLIST.TXT , then run the following:

psexec @SERVERLIST.TXT -c -u DOMAIN\%username% \\server\share\cmdprompt-install.cmd

Login to some of these target servers and enjoy the utility of the improved prompt.