Comments on: How to turn on auto-complete in the command prompt

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:54:04 +0000

Thanks Wez for Microsoft website

This is the fix:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\Command Processor\
Change the CompletionChar to 9

and also

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\Command Processor\
Change the CompletionChar to 9

By: Wez Charlton

Wez Charlton — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:51:04 +0000

Autocomplete is disabled at work and I cannot enable the use of the Tab key. However, ctrl-d and ctrl-f work to autocomplete directories and files respectively. Maybe this is enabled by default?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310530 has more details.

By: Harry C

Harry C — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:08:00 +0000

You don’t necessarily have to change the Registry to do this.
Bring up the Command window, in the upper left-hand corner,
there is a tiny “C:\” icon. Right click on this icon, select
“Defaults”, selct the “Options” tab then check “Autocomplete”.

By: Muhammad Asif

Muhammad Asif — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:34:43 +0000

If DOS auto-completion does not work under “Windows Server 2003″ Follow the instructions

1. Go to ‘Start Menu’
2. click on ‘Run’
3. Type c:\WINNT\system32\regedt32.exe and press Enter
4. Follow the registry path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHIN\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\COMMAND PROCESSOR\
5. Edit value for ‘PathCompletionChar’ to 9

Enjoy! have fun

By: Dine

Dine — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:50:39 +0000

You website gives good suggestions. So I wanted thank you and your team very much.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:23:23 +0000

If this does not work and for a lot of vista users it won’t there is another way to do this open Regedit like before and go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor

make sure that the setting for CompletionChar is the default of 40
exit the regedit and start CMD

in the top left hand corner click on the CMD picture Box
and then click defaults
in the window that opens you will see a tick box for auto complete click this box then click ok and exit CMD
now restart CMD and you should have auto complete back up and running

By: Windows Vista

Windows Vista — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:14:45 +0000

Fantastic little tip – in all these years I didn’t know this was possible… I use the command prompt all the time (still!), so this will save me some time

By: Gururaj

Gururaj — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:58:22 +0000

Thanks. This is a neat little trick. I’m not sure whether it would have worked with a value of 40 or not but all the same, the autocomplete feature is convenient especially when you need to input names of files in Japanese, where you need to change to IME.

By: akishore

akishore — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:18:39 +0000

DWiner, I also had a value of 40 in mine, but was not able to use the auto complete feature. Maybe something is wrong with my machine…I am on XP SP2.

By: DWiner

DWiner — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:29:18 +0000

Isn’t this feature turned on by default in the OS…I mean in XP? The value on my machine is 40…and I am able to use auto complete feature without any hack. Were you referring to some other OS?