I am unable to use Start from the command line with files with spaces in.

A. A. The Windows NT Start command allows the user to create separate window/process to run a specified program. If you try and run something that consists of a long file name with a space in quotes if fails and just brings up an empty cmd.exe window, e.g.

C:> start "d:documentstfaq bookcontents.doc"

fails. In order to make it work only the part that has the long name should be in quotes, e.g.

C:> start d:documents"ntfaq book"contents.doc

will work OK. This applies to anything such as a server, share etc, e.g.

C:> start \""""""""
e.g. C:> start \"johns server""docs share""ntfaq dir""table of contents.doc"

This is basically down to the fact that the first item in quotes should be the title of the window, and so a better way to work round the problem is to use

C:> start "" "d:documentstfaq bookcontents.doc"

which will now work fine and there can be as many spaces as you want in any part.