6 Essential Windows Terminal Commands That Save Hours

Published Apr 28, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

Yasir is a Mechanical Engineer who writes about tech at MUO, covering Windows, Productivity, Security, and the Internet. His interest in autonomous systems keeps him constantly tinkering with both hardware and software.

His tech writing journey began during his junior year of engineering, leading him to Android Police before joining MUO. He focuses on making technology accessible, whether he's troubleshooting Windows issues, exploring productivity tools, or explaining security risks in plain English. For Yasir, the best way to do this is to actually use the tools and run into the same problems readers face.

When he's not writing or engineering, you'll find Yasir watching Impractical Jokers and genuinely laughing at pranks he's seen a dozen times before.

Windows Terminal still feels like something only IT folks bother with, even though Microsoft has been pushing it as the default for a few years. I get the resistance because clicking through menus is comfortable. While most tasks don't really need a command line, there's a small list of commands I'd argue anyone running Windows should keep handy, alongside other Windows commands that are easy to learn but make a big difference. None are clever or exotic; they just do common jobs faster than the GUI ever will.

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Update multiple apps on your PC with Winget

No more chasing twenty different installers across twenty different websites

Updating apps on Windows is a slog if you do it the manual way — open each program, dig through its menus, hit Check for Updates, then move on. Some apps don't even check on their own. Luckily, Winget collapses the whole routine into a single line.

If you haven't used it, Winget is Microsoft's built-in package manager that ships with Windows 11 and is hands-down the best way to install apps on Windows. To run a sweep:

1. Press Windows + S, type Terminal, and pick Run as administrator.
2. Type winget upgrade --all and hit Enter.
3. Accept the source agreements if prompted (only happens the first time).

Winget pulls a list of every app it recognizes, checks each one against its source in Microsoft Store, the developer's site, or the official package repo, and queues up whatever's outdated. A typical run on my machine catches Spark Mail, Notion, Zoom, 7-Zip, and a handful of others.

It's not perfect coverage. Winget may not manage all auto-updating apps, depending on how they're registered with the package manager, and a few obscure programs won't be in the catalog at all. But for the bulk of what most people install, a single command replaces 20 separate manual checks.

Run winget upgrade without the --all flag first. It lists everything that needs updating without actually starting the process, so you can see what's about to change.

Repair corrupt Windows files before you reinstall

SFC and DISM clean up the mess before a fresh install becomes your only option

A reinstall feels productive when Windows starts misbehaving, but it costs you a full afternoon spent resetting apps, signing back in to accounts, and finding that one license key you swore you saved somewhere. Two commands handle most of what people reinstall to fix.

The first is System File Checker. It scans protected Windows files, compares them against a clean cache, and replaces anything that's been corrupted or modified. To run it:

1. Open Terminal as administrator.
2. Type sfc /scannow and hit Enter.
3. Wait for the scan to finish — it usually takes two to five minutes.

If SFC reports problems it can't fix, that's where DISM comes in. The Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool repairs the underlying Windows image that SFC pulls from, which is why it's worth running second. The command is DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth, and it'll pull replacement files from Windows Update.

DISM needs an internet connection to download replacement files. If your PC is offline or Windows Update is broken, you can point it at a mounted ISO with the /Source: flag instead.

Neither command will fix a hardware failure or a malware infection. However, for the foggy software gremlins that make Windows feel slightly off, running these two in sequence resolves the problem more often than it doesn't — and they're two of the PowerShell commands that fix most of my Windows problems.

Reliably move huge folders using Robocopy

File Explorer wasn't built for hundreds of gigabytes

File Explorer is fine for everyday drag-and-drop, but it falls apart on big transfers. There's actually a simple reason why File Explorer takes forever to start copying, and Robocopy sidesteps it. It's been built into Windows since Vista, and it's the same tool IT departments use to mirror servers. The basic syntax is straightforward:

robocopy "C:\source" "D:\destination" /MIR /Z

These two flags are important:

• /MIR mirrors the source folder exactly. It copies everything, including subfolders, and removes anything in the destination that isn't in the source.
• /Z runs the copy in restartable mode, so if the transfer gets interrupted halfway, it picks up where it left off instead of starting over.

Robocopy also prints a log of every file it copied, skipped, or couldn't access, which makes verifying the transfer a glance instead of a guess. If a file fails because another process locks it, has a permissions issue, or has a path that's too long, it tells you which one and keeps going.

/MIR deletes files in the destination that don't exist in the source. If you're copying into a folder that already has data you want to keep, drop the flag and use /E instead. /E copies subdirectories without the destructive sync.

For one-off transfers, dragging files is fine. However, for backups, drive migrations, or anything large enough that a failed copy halfway through would actually hurt, Robocopy is the only built-in option I trust to finish the job.

Verify any downloaded file with Get-FileHash

A ten-second check is all that stands between you and a tampered installer

Most people install software the same way by downloading the installer, double-clicking it, and hoping for the best. However, reputable download pages publish a hash value next to their links specifically because that hope is doing a lot of work. A hash is a unique fingerprint for a file, and even changing a single byte changes it completely.

Get-FileHash generates that fingerprint locally, so you can compare it against the developer's published value before you run anything. To check a file:

1. Right-click Terminal and pick Run as administrator.
2. Type Get-FileHash followed by the full path to the file, like Get-FileHash C:\Users\PC\Downloads\logioptionsplus_installer.exe.
3. Hit Enter and wait for the SHA256 string to appear.

Compare that string to the one on the download page. If they match, the file is exactly what the developer released. If they don't match, even by one character, the file was either corrupted during download or tampered with somewhere along the way, and you shouldn't open it.

It takes about 10 seconds and is one of the cheapest ways to check whether a downloaded file is safe before using it.

Recover any saved Wi-Fi password in seconds

Windows has been keeping the password for you

Forgetting your Wi-Fi password is one of those small problems that turns into a big one fast — a guest asks for it, your phone needs reconnecting, a new smart plug refuses to set up, and suddenly you're flipping the router over to read the sticker that nobody's touched in three years.

Windows has been quietly storing the password the whole time. Netsh will hand it back to you. Here's how:

1. Open Terminal as administrator.
2. Type netsh wlan show profiles to list every network your PC has ever connected to.
3. Type netsh wlan show profile name="YourNetworkName" key=clear, replacing the name with the one you want.
4. Look under Security settings for the Key Content line — that's the password.

It works for any network the laptop has saved, not just the one you're currently on. Helpful when you've changed routers, traveled, or just can't remember which password belongs to which network.

The only catch is that you need administrator rights for the password to actually display. Without them, netsh shows the network details but blanks out the key field.

Track down the app eating your CPU with Get-Process

A still snapshot beats a Task Manager list that won't sit still

Task Manager is the obvious choice when the laptop fan kicks into jet engine mode, but its Processes tab keeps reshuffling as you scroll, and the CPU column updates so fast that catching the actual culprit takes longer than it should. Get-Process gives you a clean snapshot instead.

The command pulls all running processes, sorts them by CPU time, and prints the top offenders to a list that doesn't move. To use it:

1. Open Terminal (administrator rights aren't required for this one).
2. Type Get-Process | Sort-Object CPU -Descending | Select-Object -First 10 and hit Enter.
3. Read the list. The process eating the most CPU sits at the top.

If you want to kill whatever's misbehaving, such as Chrome, Stop-Process -Name "chrome" -Force ends every instance of that process immediately. You can swap "chrome" for whatever's at the top of your list.

It's also better at surfacing background processes that Task Manager tucks under the "Windows processes" group. A runaway service or a stuck update component shows up here as plainly as a frozen browser, which makes diagnosing weird slowdowns a lot less of a guessing game.

A few keystrokes beat a dozen clicks

Pick the command that solves a problem you actually hit. Use Winget if your apps go months without updates, Robocopy before your next big drive migration, and Get-FileHash the next time you grab an installer from somewhere unfamiliar. Once one of these earns its spot in your routine, the rest follow naturally. Pin Windows Terminal to the taskbar so it's always one click away when you need it.