Get yourself a DOS prompt, type FTP and hit Enter. You've found the built-in command-line FTP program that ships with every copy of Windows 95 and NT! That means it's the only thing you KNOW will be on someone else's computer. But talking someone through how to use FTP is messy. If you need to help someone else out, you're better off automating the whole process by supplying them with an FTP "script". If you need to learn more about FTP, read on and go photocopy the FTP section out of a UNIX or LINUX book. Before you go further, the sample FTP command lines I give here are (like most of my code) for Win9x. If you have NT, don't leave this page without checking out the NT difference mentioned at the bottom of this page! FTP supports scripting. You use the "-s:" option to specify a script, for example if you name this text SCRIPT.TXT: open ftp.microsoft.com anonymous username@nowhere.com cd Products cd Windows cd Windows95 cd CDRomExtras cd AdministrationTools cd ApplicationTools binary hash lcd c:\ get envars.exe bye Then you could execute it like this: ftp -s:SCRIPT.TXT There is one complication. Some people have more than one FTP program. So we need to specify we want to use the original. Do it by replacing "ftp" in the above example with %windir%\ftp.exe for example %windir%\ftp.exe -s:SCRIPT.TXT By the way, the "envars.exe" the example script above downloads is a zipped file that contains two programs. One allows you to create shortcuts from DOS, and the other allows you to set system environment variables. Both are for Win9x only. Here are all the command-line options for FTP: FTP [-v] [-d] [-i] [-n] [-g] [-s:filename] [-a] [-w:buffer] [-A] [host] -v Suppresses display of remote server responses. -n Suppresses auto-login upon initial connection. -i Turns off interactive prompting during multiple file transfers. -d Enables debugging. -g Disables filename globbing (see GLOB command). -s:filename Specifies a text file containing FTP commands; the commands will automatically run after FTP starts. -a Use any local interface when binding data connection. -A login as anonymous. -w:buffer Overrides the default transfer buffer size of 4096. host Specifies the host name or IP address of the remote host to connect to. Using the "-A" option logs you in with user and host name you specified in your TCPIP setup. Which is why I prefer to specify the login name and password in the script. Here are all the local FTP commands (which you can see by typing "help" at an FTP prompt: ! delete literal prompt send ? debug ls put status append dir mdelete pwd trace ascii disconnect mdir quit type bell get mget quote user binary glob mkdir recv verbose bye hash mls remotehelp cd help mput rename close lcd open rmdir Just type help (or ?) followed by the command you want a description of. For example: help append gives this response: append Append to a file Okay, it isn't much. But it's a start. You can even turn your script into a batch file: %windir%\ftp.exe -s:%0 goto done open ftp.microsoft.com anonymous username@nowhere.com cd Products cd Windows cd Windows95 cd CDRomExtras cd AdministrationTools cd ApplicationTools binary hash lcd c:\ get envars.exe bye :done @echo off cls exit I only had to add two lines to the beginning of my script and four lines to the end to turn it into a batch file. The great part is those same lines will turn ANY FTP script into a batch file! The DOS batch file will jump over the ftp script part, and the FTP program will just return "Invalid command" and go on to the next line harmlessly when it hits the DOS batch file commands. But remember -- this and all files I write are for Win95! If you find yourself using NT/W2K, you'll need to change the %windir%\ftp.exe -s:%0 line in the above code to %windir%\system32\ftp.exe -s:%~f0 (or %windir%\system32\ftp.exe -s:"%~f0" if the batch file path has embedded spaces) NT is different in small ways that make big problems. (Thanks to Joseph Hayes for pointing that one out!) Also, if you still have problems on NT, you may need to add your "account" to your password in the script file. See here for more information: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q135858 Now then... Let's assume you don't want to embed your user name and password in the FTP batch file or script. Or maybe you want to pull the user name from somewhere else. Same problem. You're going to have to have your batch file create a separate script as it is needed. We'll start with a simple modification of the above sample code: @echo off > C:\script.txt echo open ftp.microsoft.com >> C:\script.txt echo anonymous >> C:\script.txt echo username@nowhere.com >> C:\script.txt echo cd Products >> C:\script.txt echo cd Windows >> C:\script.txt echo cd Windows95 >> C:\script.txt echo cd CDRomExtras >> C:\script.txt echo cd AdministrationTools >> C:\script.txt echo cd ApplicationTools >> C:\script.txt echo binary >> C:\script.txt echo hash >> C:\script.txt echo lcd c:\ >> C:\script.txt echo get envars.exe >> C:\script.txt echo bye start /w %windir%\ftp.exe -s:C:\script.txt del C:\script.txt cls exit Those of you "new" to batch may be confused over the "> file echo text" layout. Maybe you are used to "echo text > file". They both work the same. The only reason I used the unusual layout is that it looks neater and is easier to copy and paste. Now, suppose you had wanted batch file that could be called with the user name as parameter one, and the password as parameter two. You'd just modify the above code like this: @echo off > C:\script.txt echo open ftp.microsoft.com >> C:\script.txt echo %1 >> C:\script.txt echo %2 >> C:\script.txt echo cd Products ... and so on Or maybe you have the user name and password stored in the environment as %user% and %pass%. You would do this: @echo off > C:\script.txt echo open ftp.microsoft.com >> C:\script.txt echo %user% >> C:\script.txt echo %pass% >> C:\script.txt echo cd Products ... and so on Notice at the end of this batch file, I run FTP by using the START command with the /W (wait) option. That's so we don't delete the script we made until FTP is done using it! Under NT, sometimes (quite often) NT won't wait on a program even if you specify /w. In those cases, you may have to specify other options for START and force FTP to run in the same memory space as your batch file. If you want a few ways to prompt a user for user names and passwords, check out the sample code on this page: http://www.ericphelps.com/batch/samples/samples.htm or read about it in general here: http://www.ericphelps.com/batch/userin/index.htm If you want to embed your user name in your batch file but don't want it visible, read my advice here: http://www.ericphelps.com/batch/samples/obfuscating.txt :: http://www.ericphelps.com