What is the difference between MS-DOS and Windows Command?

The difference is not in what commands it can do or can't (there are some differences, like in anything in more than 20 years. But yes, windows command inherit from the MS-Dos shell. It is the same thing).

The difference is in what it is. You are confusing an Operating System and a Shell.

Operating system is what makes the machine work, run programs, access to hardware (memory, hard disk, peripherals such as sound card, graphics card, keyboard, ...), schedule concurrent programs, ...

Shell is just one interface to that. The CLI (command line interface) to discuss with the OS.

In MS-DOS there was only one standard shell (but you could find some others. Hackers all used back then more powerful shells, some sort of extension of the command.com shell. In my last years of MS-Dos, I was using tcsh, a shell from the Unix world). In windows you also have powershell (so I have been told. I've not put a hand on a windows machine in a while). Or bash (I am not referring to what lot of people call improperly bash, and is a whole linux. Same dichotomy goes in unix world: unix or gnu/linux is the OS. Bash is just one CLI to it, which represents less than 1% of the code of the OS)

Graphical interface is another.

So you are comparing

* A shell : just a program, a CLI, whose job is pretty simple (read a command line, execute it. Of course, it is not that simple, since those commands can be sophisticated, but still, it is just one program, whose job is to start other program. It doesn't schedule it, it doesn't allocate ressource to it. It does nothing. It just ask the OS to do it.

* An OS : that allocate resources, manages drivers, hardware, ...

Windows is the OS. Windows command is A Shell (the default one).

MS-DOS is the OS. Command.com is A shell (the default one).

So, in other words, if your question had been "what is the difference between Windows Command and MS-Doss command.com shell", answer would have been "nothing, but 20 years of small improvements". It is the same code. 20 years later. One is just a more recent version of the other.

But since you asked "what is the difference between MS-DOS and Windows Command", we may assume that you believe that windows command is a small OS inside the Windows OS, which is not at all the case, and reply "they have nothing to do which each other. One is an OS, the other is a CLI shell".

Again, understand that there is an OS. And there are user interface so that the user can interact with that OS.

That user interface can be CLI (like MS-DOS's command.com, or like Windows-command, or like bash) or can be graphical (like old windows 3.1 or like Windows graphical interface, or like Gnome)

The confusion is made easier to make, considering windows history. Once upon a time, MS-DOS was the OS. It was running, fullscreen, by default, at startup, a CLI, command.com, and from that CLI you could decide to run any program, including another interface, such as windows 3.1, which was not an OS, but just an alternative graphical interface to MS-DOS.

Nowadays, it is the otherway. Windows is the OS. It runs fullscreen, by default, at startup, a graphical interface. From which you can decide to run any program, including other interface, such as Windows command, which is not an OS, but just another text interface to the Windows OS.

Since people often confuse the MS-Dos OS and its default text interface, and also confuse the Windows OS with its graphical interface, it gives the feeling that once upon a time "DOS was used to start windows" and now "Windows is used to start DOS".

"I have actually played around with MS-DOS on a virtual machine-"

 no you havent

MSDOS is a free standing operating system that the computer boots into directly

Running is ANY OTHER WAY the actual operating system (windows) will limit some of its functionality, and give you added functionality (which at 1st glance may look the same- but isnt)

  (the virtual machine you are using is working within what the actual operating system allows it (WIN10?)

 that is- ACTUAL MSDOS allows you to do more than running it under the virtual machine does

 (If I remember correctly - actual msdos allows you to work DIRECTLY with machine code - you cannot do that using a virtual machine

MS-DOS was all you had back then, so its command structure was very robust and powerful.

Windows Command today is just a shadow of this. Enough to do some simple things but nowhere near as powerful as the original MS-DOS was.

If you are interested in experimenting in the original DOS, look up a freeware program called DOSBOX and try it out.

Hope This Helps !

MS Windows is built on top of MS-DOS! From Windows 1.0 to Windows 10

MS-DOS was a full operating system. It handled memory management, drivers, process mangement, disk management, etc. It had a command line interface for the user.

Windows command is a command-line interface to enter commands.... but those commands are interpreted and passed to the Windows operating system/kernel to be executed/processed. The command prompt does not actually mange processes, memory, drivers, etc.

You are essentially comparing the user interfaces of the two things and declaring them to be the same thing. The windows command prompt is little more than a UI. However, a UI is only part of a full operating system.

Although they look the same and have some similar programs there is a large set of windows commands that do not appear in DOS. In DOS, the command prompt was simply only way to run the computer from. The one in windows is a hold-over which allows the newer OS to restrict vital programs from being executed by unknowledgeable users.

There are some similarities but they're definitely not the same, also the modern command prompt it's much more lenient. Not to mention Windows doesn't run on top of MS-DOS anymore so it's not completely dependent on it anymore.

MS-DOS is a disk operating system. It manages system resources like disk space and memory allocation to programs. Windows command is an interactive shell that can be used to start programs and execute batch files. COMMAND.COM was the original shell that ran on MS-DOS. In Windows the shell is now CMD.EXE, but is essentially the same thing as it's MS-DOS ancestor. The next generation shell for current versions of Windows is Power Shell.

There's lots of differences. The first and most obvious is that Windows commands are Windows programs and MS-DOS commands are MS-DOS programs. You cannot run Windows programs in MS-DOS, and 64-bit versions of Windows can't run MS-DOS programs without an emulator.  

The second major difference is what commands will be available in each operating system. Saying "Windows commands and MS-DOS commands are the same" is false, because many commands available in one will not be available in another. MS-DOS does not include ping or systeminfo, for example, and modern Windows does not have DEBUG or EDIT.

But I think the real issue is your need to try to compare them in the first place.  Anybody old enough to have used MS-DOS has had 20+ years to learn how the Command Prompt works. And people who are learning about the Command Prompt for the first time do not need to know about MS-DOS. So what if the commands are superficially similar in output? Lots of operating systems have command interpreters. People keep calling the Command Prompt in Windows the "DOS Prompt", and perpetuate the myth that Windows is still somehow based on or reliant on legacy code from 1981. That's the most irritating part.

its the same thing, ms dos was required in the 80s and 90s to run older windows versions, now new versions of windows don't need dos to run, so they call it windows command instead, some clowns who are too much into technical terms will say its not the same thing but the only difference is some minor command names have been changed and windows runs the command prompt instead of the command prompt running windows.