Command Prompt Disabled?

Firstly, thank you very much for having me. Always nice to chat with people who enjoy this stuff as much as I do.

Which brings me to my problem...I have into a problem that I cannot figure out how to fix. I've looked all over from technet and other google searches and still cannot find the solution.

My mother's computer (which I am trying to fix for her) is running Windows Home Premium 64 and I can't get the command prompt to work other than going to CD. Not a single batch command works from ipconfig to mkdir to ping or even help works and I keep getting this same error:

ipconfig is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

Ditto for all of the others. The best I can figure is that is was disabled beforehand since gpedit is not available on Home Premium. I've tried adding the reg keys to the registry (maybe that was the vista one actually ) but none the less, is still can't get figured it out.

Anyone got any ideas? Suggestions? Even ever heard of this before? I would hate to think that this major company is disabling the command line just to drum up more business for it's "repair" services.

Thanks a ton for any help!

Hi and Welcome.
I assume you are using Windows 7 x64 Home Premium.
How are you accessing the Command Prompt?

Read through this Tutorial to see if it is of help to you.

Command Prompt - Enable or Disable - Vista Forums

Ztruker said:

Sounds like the PATH environment variable is messed up.It should start with the following:

PATH=C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v 1.0\;

It will have other stuff after that but that should be the beginning. To check, open a Command Prompt (Start / Run / cmd) then type path. Post the results here please.

Thanks everyone; the path variable was missing. How does that even happen? It's a new cpu, and I know she wouldn't have messed with it. I've got everything pretty much locked down security wise so I'm 99% sure that wasn't it.