MSG.exe – Windows CMD Command

Send a pop-up message to a user.

Syntax
      MSG username [options] [message]

      MSG sessionname [options] [message]

      MSG sessionid   [options] [message]

      MSG  @filename [options] [message]

      MSG * [options] [message]

Options

   username            The user to send to, * will send to all sessions on the machine.

   /SERVER:servername  The server to contact (default is current).

   /TIME:seconds       Time delay to wait for receiver to acknowledge msg.

   /V                  Verbose, display extra information.

   /W                  Wait for response from user, useful with /V.

   message             The message text to send, some special characters may
                       have to be escaped.

Msg is most commonly used to send Terminal Server/Citrix shutdown messages.
The ‘Home’ editions of Windows don’t include MSG.

Special characters: dash (-) forward-slash (/) and quote marks (“) can be escaped with a backslash (undocumented)

If no message text to send is specified, MSG will prompt for it (also reads from stdin)
@filename Identifies a file containing a list of usernames, session names, or sessions to send the message to.

Examples

C:\> msg userf4t "The system will shutdown at 10pm"

C:\> msg * "The \"ACME\" system is currently down."