Tab completion in Windows 2000

October 17, 2002 by Pete Freitag

One of my favorite features of unix is tab completion. You can type the first letter of a directory, and then hit tab and it will complete the rest for you. This is enabled by default on Windows XP, but on windows 2000 it isn't. Here's how you enable it. Run regedit.exe and browse to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\PathCompletionChar

Set the value to the key to 09 that's hex for tab. If you only want to enable it for your user account use these keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\PathCompletionChar

I guess I don't need to upgrade to XP now! I should mention that tab completion only works within the command prompt, don't expect it to work within windows file choosers.