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Colbra

I’ve just been messing about with this the whole evening. Your tip is very useful and I thought I might just add some things I discovered for your readers if it’s OK?
When the registry key you mentioned is deleted then Windows console defaults to sixteen basic colors. They are:

0 = Black 8 = Gray
1 = Blue 9 = Light Blue
2 = Green A = Light Green
3 = Aqua B = Light Aqua
4 = Red C = Light Red
5 = Purple D = Light Purple
6 = Yellow E = Light Yellow
7 = White F = Bright White

With no registry key you’ll be able to write ‘Color 1b’ in a console window and see a light aqua text on a blue background. All this can change if you start messing around with the registry. Let’s say you’ve got a shortcut on your desktop to the Cmd.exe executable, and you haven’t altered any of its properties. Clicking this link will give you a standard console window – probably too tiny to read properly if you’re over forty and have a reasonably high resolution screen setting – and in standard white or gray text on a black background. By creating and merging the following .reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERConsole]
“ScreenBufferSize”=dword:00a50054
“WindowSize”=dword:001c0054
“FontSize”=dword:00180000
“FontFamily”=dword:00000036
“FontWeight”=dword:00000190
“FaceName”=”Lucida Console”
“WindowPosition”=dword:0087005a
“ColorTable00″=dword:5a0000
“ColorTable01″=dword:b90000
“ColorTable11″=dword:ffff
“ColorTable12″=dword:00ffff00
“ScreenColors”=dword:0000000c

. . . your desktop link will now give you a bigger window with clear readable cyan or aqua coloured text on a dark blue background. Write color 1b again and this time you’ll get yellow text on a reddish brown background.

When the [HKEY_CURRENT_USERConsole] key exists then clicking directly on the executable cmd.exe in the %systemroot% folder or opening the Run box (StartButton|Run or in Windows 10 rightclick StartButton|Run) and writing cmd.exe will always give a window with these defaults UNLESS there is a subkey in the registry called [HKEY_CURRENT_USERConsole%SystemRoot%_system32_cmd.exe] in which case the values under this key will be the default. But the values under [HKEY_CURRENT_USERConsole] will remain the defaults for all created shortcuts to cmd.exe. However for each shortcut the default can be overridden by rightclicking the shortcut icon and choosing Properties OR by opening the console from the shortcut and then selecting Properties from the menu line. These values are not saved in the registry but (presumably) in the metadata of the linkfile. So restoring these properties to Windows original defaults cannot be done by the registry but only by manually changing values in the properties window.

colbra

Ah! Sorry! the value for “ColorTable01 in the reg file should have been 81146 thus:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERConsole]
“ScreenBufferSize”=dword:00a50054
“WindowSize”=dword:001c0054
“FontSize”=dword:00180000
“FontFamily”=dword:00000036
“FontWeight”=dword:00000190
“FaceName”=”Lucida Console”
“WindowPosition”=dword:0087005a
“ColorTable00″=dword:5a0000
“ColorTable01″=dword:81146
“ColorTable11″=dword:ffff
“ColorTable12″=dword:00ffff00
“ScreenColors”=dword:0000000c

ejfff smith

this helped so much thx!!!!!!!!

thankful user

Thanks for this! I was searching for this answer for a long time.