open command prompt window and change current working directory

Question

This works for me:

@ECHO OFF
cmd.exe /K "cd C:\my\destination && C:"

The quoted string is actually two commands (separated by a double ampersand): The first command is to change to the specified directory, the second command is to change to the specified drive letter.

Put this in a batch (.BAT) file and when you execute it you should see a Command Prompt window at the specified directory.

Use the /K switch:

@ECHO OFF
start cmd.exe /K "cd C:\my\destination"

But IMHO, the most useful switch is /?.

Starts a new instance of the Windows XP command interpreter

CMD [/A | /U] [/Q] [/D] [/E:ON | /E:OFF] [/F:ON | /F:OFF] [/V:ON | /V:OFF]
    [[/S] [/C | /K] string]

/C      Carries out the command specified by string and then terminates
/K      Carries out the command specified by string but remains
/S      Modifies the treatment of string after /C or /K (see below)
/Q      Turns echo off
...

And only if it does not work, then Google it, as @Neeraj suggested :D

This could be done like that:

@ECHO OFF
cd /D "C:\my\destination"
cmd.exe

If you need to execute a file or command after you open the cmd you can just replace the last line with:

cmd.exe /k myCommand

@ECHO OFF
%comspec% /K "cd /D d:\somefolder"

The /D will change folder and drive and works on 2000+ (Not sure about NT4)

If you take a look at Vista's open command here, it uses cmd.exe /s /k pushd \"%V\" but I don't think %V is documented. Using pushd is a good idea if your path is UNC (\\server\share\folder) To get UNC current directory working, you might have to set the DisableUNCCheck registry entry...

Why so complicated? Just create an alias to cmd.exe, right click on the alias and navigate to its settings. Change the "execute in" to the path you want to have as standard path. It will always start in this path.