How to do a HTTP HEAD request from the windows command line?

On Linux, I often use curl with the --head parameter. It is available for several operating systems, including Windows.

[edit] related to the answer below, gknw.net is currently down as of February 23 2012. Check curl.haxx.se for updated info.

If you cannot install aditional applications, then you can telnet (you will need to install this feature for your windows 7 by following this) the remote server:

TELNET server_name 80

followed by:

HEAD /virtual/directory/file.ext

or

GET /virtual/directory/file.ext

depending on if you want just the header (HEAD) or the full contents (GET)

There is a Win32 port of wget that works decently.

PowerShell's Invoke-WebRequest -Method Head would work as well.