Can you recommend any good books about shell scripting in Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000? I'm primarily interested in a book about the command processor (cmd.exe) and batch files.

Tim Hill's Windows NT Shell Scripting (Macmillan Technical Publishing, 1998) is my favorite. This book is one of the few, if not the only, Windows shell-scripting book that teaches you how to use the command processor's command language to create practical systems administration batch files.

Admittedly, Windows NT Shell Scripting is showing its age, so it's not going to contain information about Windows 2003, XP, and Win2K. However, if you couple this book with Microsoft's updated online documentation and Dick Lewis's 10-part "Shell Scripting 101" series, I think you'll have everything you need to conquer cmd.exe. (To access the first lesson in the Web-exclusive "Shell Scripting 101" series, go to http://www.winnetmag.com/windowsscripting and enter 16355 in the InstantDoc ID text box. You can find links to the other nine lessons from the first lesson.)