Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Hint: A more detailed version of the FAQ can be found on our homepage www.ghisler.com
Q: Where can I find the latest version of Total Commander?
Q: Why does it sometimes take very long to launch Total Commander?
A: This can happen when it tries to connect to an unavailable drive on the network, or to load icons from files that are on the network. With the free tool "process monitor" from
www.sysinternals.com (now a part of Microsoft) you can find out what is going on while Total Commander is busy.
Q: From time to time we have a "General protection fault" in Total Commander. The screen looks funny, the mouse cursor freezes, etc. What can we do?
A: Often the bug isn't in Total Commander, but the display driver. This is a component of Windows supplied by the manufacturer of the display adapter card. First you should check if the same problems occur with the standard VGA driver. If not, you should ask your vendor for a new driver, or look on the Internet for an updated driver. Today, most manufacturers have their own homepage with the latest drivers available for download.
If you experience the same problems with the VGA card and no other programs are running when the error occurs, you should send me a bug report with the version of Total Commander and Windows you use, the exact error address and the name of the module where the error occurs.
Q: Total Commander cannot access files containing certain characters like ALT+255. What can I do?
A: DOS and Windows use different character sets, ASCII and ANSI. Certain characters contained in ASCII such as DOS line drawing characters do not exist in Windows! You must start a DOS box and rename the file by hand with RENAME. The same applies to UNICODE names on Windows NT.
Q: How do I keep Total Commander from re-reading the directories in the file windows each time I switch to Total Commander? With network drives this can take quite some time!
A: Go to menu Configuration - Options - Refresh, and enter the following behind "No refresh for these drives":
HIJ
Where HIJ are the slow network drives. The directory can always be re-read by pressing F2.
Q: How can I view the contents of self-extracting archives?
A: Put the cursor on the file, and press CTRL+PgDn. This works with normal and self-extracting archives as well as with directories.
Q: How can I quickly switch to an often used directory?
A: A button can be created in the button bar to take you directly to a specific directory, regardless of which drive or directory is currently selected. To do so, select the directory, press and hold down the SHIFT key, and drag the directory to the button bar. A new icon will appear. Clicking on this icon will change the drive (if required) and open the directory. Alternatively, you can create a menu entry in the directory menu, which can be reached with Ctrl+D, or by double clicking on the file window title.
Q: Is there a way to make Total Commander display the disk space used by all directories in the current directory individually?
A: Yes! Simply press ALT+SHIFT+ENTER on a directory. Instead of <DIR> the size of this directory and all its subdirectories will be shown! This will only work in full view (i.e. all file details are shown).
Q: How can I add a program to the button bar?
A: Simply press and hold down the SHIFT key, then drag the program to the desired position in the button bar.
Q: How can I delete or change a button in the button bar?
A: Click with the right mouse button on the bar and select 'Change' or 'Delete' from the popup menu.
Q: How can I view more file types in the internal viewer (F3)?
A: For that purpose, you can download Lister plugins from our homepage (under Addons - Plugins). The installation is very easy: Launch Total Commander, go to the directory with the downloaded plugin (ZIP or RAR file), and double click on the plugin archive. You will then be asked whether you want to install that plugin.
Q: Total Commander saves the last 20 command lines, but since I often enter passwords and other confidential information, I would like to disable this function.
A: This can be changed in the main
Configuration dialog, page
Operation. Existing old command lines can be removed from the dropdown list with Shift+Delete.
Q: Why does the selection around the current file disappear if I enter something in the command line?
A: Windows doesn't allow an active marker in two windows at the same time! You can get back into the file list by pressing the up or down arrow.
Q: How can I easily rename a file? The current name of the file should be given as the default!
A: Select the file and press SHIFT+F6. This opens the in place rename box. Press SHIFT+F6 again to select just the name part (without extension). To rename the file, enter the new name and press ENTER.
Q: After the execution of a DOS command such as DIR the window is closed so quickly that the output of the program is unreadable!
A: You can start the program with SHIFT+ENTER instead of ENTER. This leaves the window open after the program terminates. The command will be started via noclose.exe in the Totalcmd directory.
Q: How can I start Total Commander with a predefined directory, or even a ZIP file?
Q: Is there a way to have different settings for multiple users on the same machine?
A: You can use a
command line parameter to use a different ini file for each user. Just create multiple Total Commander icons in the Windows start menu, with a different .ini file for each user!
Q: How can I suppress the splashscreen when starting Total Commander?
A: Put the following line in the file
wincmd.ini below [Configuration]:
StartupScreen=0
Of course, this will only work in the registered version.
Q: How about a Linux version?
A: Unfortunately we had to cancel our plans to port Total Commander to Linux. There are already at least two good Commander-style tools for Linux:
mc (Midnight Commander) - a console mode Commander, very powerful
Krusader - currently the best X-Window based Commander
Q: When I connect to my company FTP server, I get an error that the server isn't supported. Why?
A: Unfortunately the file listing produced by FTP servers is not standardized. Therefore Total Commander can only support the most used servers. Currently it supports many styles Unix, DOS, Windows, OS/2, AS/400 and VMS servers. If your server isn't supported, you can still see the remote listing with Alt+Enter. You can also define your own server type, there is an option in the connection settings.
Q: How do I save or print a list of files?
A: You have two options:
1. Create a button with the command cm_copyfullnamestoclip . When you press it, all selected file names will be copied to the clipboard, from which you can paste them to any program.
2. Download the
diskdir plugin from the Addons page on
www.ghisler.com. It works like a packer, but creates a human-readable list of all selected files (with size and date/time), including subdirs.
Q: How do I remove (uninstall) the program?
A: Since version 4.50 the 32-bit version contains a program to remove Total Commander. You can reach it through Control Panel - Add/Remove software, or by going to the Total Commander directory and starting WCUNINST.EXE . If you have used the parallel port connection on Windows NT or 2000, you should run uninstall as an administrator, otherwise the parallel port driver cannot be removed.
Older versions can be removed by deleting the Total Commander directory completely (usually c:\totalcmd).
Q: Why doesn't Drag&Drop from the Windows Desktop or Explorer work?
A: This happens when you start Total Commander with higher privileges ("As Administrator"). Windows then prevents communication with the Desktop/Explorer, which runs with normal rights, for security reasons. Go into the properties of the link that opens Total Commander (right click - properties). There you have to check in 2 places whether "as administrator" is enabled, and deactivate it if necessary:
1. Button "Advanced ..." - "Run as administrator"
2. "Compatibility" tab - "Run program as administrator"
None of the two options must be active!
Q: The symbols in the button bar look fuzzy and unclean.
A: Total Commander uses normal 32x32 or 16x16 icons in its button bar. To fit more icons on one line, Total Commander shrinks these icons. The size can be defined in the dialog
Configuration - Button bar. If you don't like the fuzzy look, you can set the size to
32 or
16 to avoid shrinking the icons, use the 'small icons' option.
Q: Where can I find Zip-NT by Info-Zip to pack files with long filenames?
A: You can find Zip-NT at the following WWW address:
http://infozip.sourceforge.net/. Unfortunately this version does NOT support high ASCII characters like German "Umlauts" and French or Scandinavian accents! You should use the internal ZIP packer which supports all this! You should only use ZIP-NT if you need special command line switches like zip file comments, freshen, or update.
Q: How can I sort directories by date/time?
A: By default, directories are sorted by name. However, it can be changed in Configuration - Options - Display - Like files (also by time). If you need to change this multiple times, you may create a button in the button bar with the command cm_SwitchDirSort .
Q: How can I sort files numerically, e.g. File9 before File10?
A: Go to menu Configuration - Options - Display. There is an option to set the sort method. Choose the last option:
Natural sorting: Alphabetical and numbers
Q: Suddenly many hotkeys no longer work. What could be the cause?
A: This happens when another program has registered hotkeys system-wide. Often the culprit is the program "Geforce Experience" from NVIDIA. It registers dozens of hotkeys for itself, among which are very important hotkeys like Alt+F1 (left drive) or Alt+F5 (pack files)! But you can easily change or remove these hotkeys: Press Alt+Z, and then click on the cog wheel and on Keyboard shortcuts. Then click on a shortcut and press Delete to remove it, or a new hotkey to change it.
Q: Total Commander crashes when opening the right click context menu, or on Alt+Enter. What could be the problem?
A: The problem you have is most probably a faulty shell extension. Explanation: The context menu is provided by the Explorer, and many programs can add menu items to it. If just one of these programs has problems, it could hang or crash the entire menu. To correct it, please try the following:
1. Get the free tool ShellExView:
2. Start it. If you are using Total Commander 32-bit on 64-bit Windows, you need to check the option "Show 32-bit extensions" in ShellExView settings.
3. Sort the shell extensions by type
4. Disable all context menu shell extensions one by one (you can hide/keep those belonging to Windows, they are usually OK).
5. Continue until Total Commander stops crashing
6. Now you can re-enable the extensions which don't cause any problems