How to change the Font and Background Color of DOS

How to change the Font and Background Color of DOS is today’s topic. If you use computer regularly then you must be familiar with DOS. Although DOS came at very early stage but still today it is a very powerful tool. Many of the works are still done at DOS like configuring some typical tasks of computer, deleting virus which can’t be done generally on the windows. Many more advantages are there.

We know that Default color of DOS is white font and black background. Many people think they can’t change this font color and background color. They are very wrong. We can change this font color and background color of DOS according to our choice like black font and white background in MS word, any combination you wish.

Windows Command Prompt windows or DOS has a default value of 0, for standard white text on a black background.

Now let’s learn how to change the font and background color of DOS

  1. Open Registry (press win + r or goto start->run and type regedit and hit enter)
  2. Now goto [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command processor]
  3. You’ll find Default color in the right side.
  4. Double click the Default color (by default you will see 0 value in inserted there)
  5. You can replace its value with a two-digit hexadecimal number, in which the first digit selects a background color and the second a font color. The hexadecimal codes and colors are: -

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

A value of F0, for example, would give black text on a white background. You can try any combination with these values and work with the comfortable combination.

The change should take effect the next time you open a console window.

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Collection of an Easter Eggs - Part I

So before presenting you the collection of Easter Eggs, Let me first explain you what is Easter Eggs?

According to wikipedia, Easter eggs is

A virtual Easter egg is an intentional hidden message or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, or video game.

Actually how it happens?

Easter eggs are messages, videos, graphics, sound effects, or an unusual change in program behavior that sometimes occur in a software program in response to some undocumented set of commands, mouse clicks, keystrokes or other stimuli intended as a joke or to display program credits. They are often located in the “About” box of a software.

For example, two Easter eggs exists in the “About” box of Adobe Photoshop 7: an alternate “Liquid Sky” splash screen and the ability to speed up credits to view funny quotations. An early use of the term Easter eggs was to describe a message hidden in the object code of program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code.

So you already got one Easter egg in the example itself. So I will be posting here some series of Easter eggs from now onwards; this is the first part of Easter eggs. Now Easter eggs are there to lighten up the mood and they do so by shocking us or making a laugh. Here are a selected few Easter eggs from some of the most popular software.

1. Windows XP

A typical windows XP installation contains a music theme that’s hidden away in a folder.

c:\windows\system32\oobe\images

Enter this location in the address bar on windows explorer as it’s a hidden folder. The track is called title.wma

Double click on it to run it and enjoy the windows welcome music.

2. uTorrent

uTorrent has an interesting little Easter egg in it. I hope you all know about uTorrent, it is a very famous P2P sharing file network where you can download lots of things freely.

Start uTorrent and click on Help->About uTorrent.

Click on the logo on the left top, and a small sound will be played - Something like the one played in the THX trailer.

An even more surprising Easter egg can be found in the same window.

Press [ctrl] + [T] and you will find a small Tetris game running. Use the arrow keys to rotate and move the blocks into place.

3. Notepad

Notepad is a text editor and not many people believe there is an Easter egg in it.

Create a new Notepad text file and type in

bush hit the facts

Save the file and close it. Re-open the file to see what you find. Even if you type

this app can break

You will get the same results-garbled text. This is not technically an Easter egg, but an issue.

Note:- Remember only one method will work at a time. If you want to try another one, delete the first file and implement the second one.

4. Firefox

Firefox has a silly Easter egg, which can be viewed by entering

about kitchensink

in the location bar. A kitchen sink made up of ASCII characters will open up with water flowing down it.

You need to be connected to the internet for this.

You can also get the same result in other browsers by entering the keyword about kitchensink in Google and selecting I’m Feeling Lucky.

So try all of them, you will surely love it. Also share here if you know some Easter eggs too. I may post it next series.

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