[jpboyrox]

Do you know any way to find the command-line switches of a program. For example, I noticed that the Avira command on start up is "C:\Programs\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\avgnt.exe" /min". I want to find out if it is possible to find out the command at the end (in this case "/min")

[Squashman]

Most utilities you can just type /? at the end of the command and it will list all the switches that are available. Otherwise I am sure they would be listed on the vendors website or help file.

[jpboyrox]

Originally Posted by Squashman

Most utilities you can just type /? at the end of the command and it will list all the switches that are available. Otherwise I am sure they would be listed on the vendors website or help file.

Where should I type this? In CMD? Would it by along the lines of "C:\Programs\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\avgnt.exe" /?"

[Phantom010]

Windows XP Commands

/min means Minimized.

[jpboyrox]

Yes, obviously I understand that /min means minimised. I want to find other commands like /min for example "open" or "add" which seem to be different for every program. One of the things I want to do is add a link to videos in the context menu that says "Convert with AVC" so that when I click on that it will add the video to the 'convert' list in AVC. To do this I need to find out what the command-line switches are for AVC. This is NOT just for AVC so please don't post a link to their website. I want learn how to find out the command-line switches for any given program. I think that Squashman got the idea but I'm not quite sure what he meant with his reply

[Squashman]

Not all programs have alternate startup parameters or switches.
The only real way to find out is to read the help file for the program or check the programs support site.

The first I usually do is execute the program with a forward slash and question mark. That is pretty much the standard for most programs that take cmd line parameters.

Open up a cmd prompt.
ipconfig /?
ping /?
dir /?
etc, etc, etc.....

Some programs don't show their optional parameters for starting up using the /?. Windows Explorer is one of them but they are well documented on the web.

About the best anybody here can do is Google Search for you and I think you can do that on your own. There is no defacto standard for optional startup parameters.

[jpboyrox]

so for example, I should type "avgnt.exe /?" ? Should I navigate to "C:\Programs\Avira\AntiVir Desktop" first?

[DoubleHelix]

Yes, you'd have to navigate to the folder first.

[TheOutcaste]

avgnt.exe /? and avgnt.exe -? don't display any help, and the Avira site doesn't have them listed. There used to be info in the Avira forums, the the links all seem to be broken now. They have a Command Line tool that should be documented, but for the main program it's a matter of browsing and searching through the forum.

A google search often finds the info, these are what I try, for example for explorer.exe:
explorer.exe "command line" switch OR reference OR parameter
or
explorer.exe batch usage

HTH

Jerry