Can I abort telnet while it is still trying to connect?

Question

At times I find myself telnetting from Windows XP to another server and that I state a wrong port number such as

c:\> telnet xxxxx.yy pp

After hitting Enter, I realize that I entered the wrong port number and would like to abort the telnet process with a ctrl-c, however, telnet doesn't seem to respond even to ctrl-c. So, I have to wait a few seconds until telnet returns with a

Connecting to xxxxx.yy... 
Could not open connection to the host, on port pp: Connect failed

It's rather annoying to wait for the error message, especially when I already know it will eventually come.

So, is there a way to immediately stop the telnet process?

Answer 1

Edit: Of course, it's never that simple. As you've observed, Microsoft's telnet doesn't respond to ^] while waiting for a connection.

If you don't want to wait around, you only have two options:

• Kill the telnet process (from another command shell or the task manager), or

• Use another telnet client. PuTTY is a good choice, since it will launch as a separate window; even if you get the port wrong and the PuTTY window freezes, your command shell will be available to launch another instance with the correct port number.

---

Use the escape character (defaults to Ctrl+]). This brings up a telnet prompt at which you can close or quit the connection.

> telnet

Welcome to Microsoft Telnet Client

Escape Character is 'CTRL+]'

Microsoft Telnet> 

You can change this to nearly anything you like on your commandline by using the -e flag:

C:\>telnet /?

telnet [-a][-e escape char][-f log file][-l user][-t term][host [port]]
[...]
 -e      Escape character to enter telnet client prompt.
[...]

C:\>telnet -e '

Welcome to Microsoft Telnet Client

Escape Character is '''

Microsoft Telnet>