Batch file Network Commands: NET

In this tutorial, you will learn in depth about batch file network commands: NET with examples.

Batch file NET command: Introduction

NET USER command: Introduction

Adding new user account

Changing password of the user account

Deleting user account

Viewing information of user account

Assigning admin rights

Starting & Stopping services

Batch file NET commands are used to manage and troubleshoot any aspect of the network with lot more exciting features.

For those who are not familiar with command line and batch file, we will guide you through every aspect of net command.

Batch file: NET command

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We can use NET commands for managing our network as well as troubleshooting locally and remotely in any network.

There are 21 sub-commands with its own switches.

Don’t panic we will explain each and every command.

Syntax of net command:

NET [ACCOUNTS | COMPUTER | CONFIG | CONTINUE | FILE | GROUP |
     HELP | LOCALGROUP | PAUSE | SESSION | SHARE | START |
     STATISTICS | STOP | TIME | USE | USER | VIEW ]

If you are new to this command, then NET HELP command explains different types of names and syntax of NET command as follow:

Now let’s take a look at one of the interesting NET subcommand i.e. USER

Batch file command: NET USER

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NET USER command is used for viewing, creating, deleting and setting the password for an existing or newly created accounts in windows.

For this, we should run command line with administrative privileges.
Syntax of NET USER command:

C:\> NET USER

This command will display all the users in you local machine.

The NET command with USER or USERS will perform the same operation.

As seen in the above picture, there are five different users on my local machine i.e.

'Administrator', 'DefaultAccount', 'Guest', 'ICT' and WDAGUtilityAccount'

The Administrator and Guest are default accounts created when we install an operating system.

Administrator user has admin rights whereas Guest belongs to the same category with fewer privileges.

I created ICT account when installing windows.

Other accounts were created by the operating system for different purposes such as remote access, troubleshooting, and updates.

Adding the new user using a command line and Batch file.

So let’s have some fun using NET subcommand USER along with the '/add'.

C:\> NET USER "username" "password" /add

where,

username = new username you want to add

password = password for the new username

Let’s run the command:

As we can see in the above picture, we have created a new account named tech_user with pass as a password.

This tech_user have normal privileges and restricted from installing new software and access to restricted folders.

This can be done using the batch file as follow:

@echo off
net user tech_user pass /add

Write the above code in notepad and save it with .bat extension. Run the saved file using administrator rights the new user will be created in your computer.

Changing password of the newly created account using command line

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C:\> NET USER tech_user *
Type a password for the user:
Retype the password to confirm:

Type new password, confirm it and see the result.

The above code will change the password.

Changing password of user account using batch file

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@echo off
net user tech_user *

If you run this file, it will ask for new password.

Deleting user account using command line

We can also delete the user account using NET USER command with ‘/delete’.

Syntax

C:\> NET USER user_name /delete

Let’s run this syntax in command line

Now we can see that tech_user account has been successfully removed from the computer.

Batch file syntax for deleting user account

@echo off
net user tech_user /delete

What if you want to see detailed information about a specific user?

For this, we have following syntax

C:\> NET USER user_name

This command will display account information, password last set, password expiry, whether the user has right to change the password and other information.

Assigning administrator rights to the user account

As said earlier, by default newly created account doesn’t have administrator privileges.

However, we can assign administrator rights to the accounts using the command line.

For this, we have to use localgroup subcommand.

C:\> net localgroup administrators tech_user /add

Now, I have assigned tech_user account to the administrator group which means it now has administrator privileges.

Again for deleting the user, we have to use the above mentioned /delete command.

Starting and stopping specific services supported by computer using the command line

There are various services running on the computer which can be viewed from services.msc.

Let’s try to start and then stop print spooler service using the command line.

Syntax

C:\> net start service_name
C:\> net stop service_name

where,

service_name = specific service name

Starting print spooler service

Stopping print spooler service