Command Prompt Color - Registry setting doesn't work for this combo.

Here's an anomaly.

In my W7 Ultimate Administrator Command Prompt, I'm trying to set the colors as follows:
Screen Background: 192, 192, 192
Screen Text: 0, 0, 255

You can see the selection area by right-clicking the Title Bar (or the little black box at top left) and clicking Properties or Defaults.

My preference (RGB numbers above) is a light gray background with bright blue text.

Problem is, the background won't stay set. It keeps reverting to a murky green, 128, 128, 0.

No problem, says I. The colors can be set in the registry. But can they?

Here's the rub. Under the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Command Processor, the Set DefaultColor command only works for a 2-character combination of 0 to 9 plus A to F. You can see the same thing working in the Command Prompt box itself. If you type 'color' followed by say, f0, you'll get black text on a white background. color 0f will get you white text on black. And so on.

Now, if you Google for 'command prompt colors' you'll get umpteen pages like this one that show the colors represented by the 16 characters:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../bb490882.aspx

Have a look for 'gray' in any of those charts and you'll find it's represented by the numeral 8.

But go back to the palette in the Command Box and you'll see that there are TWO grays. And the gray that 8 gets is a DARK gray, not the LIGHT gray beside it on the palette.

So if I type color 89 in the box, I get blue text on a DARK gray background, not the blue on light gray that I can get from the palette.

Do you see my dilemma? Neither the Defaults or Properties selections in the command box will remember my settings. But I can't set my colors as defaults in the registry because there's no number that represents the light gray that I want.

Anyone have an answer for this?

Thanks for reading.

Thanks Pyprohly. Actually, I haven't changed any settings in the Registry yet, I was just pointing out that there's no color code (f0, 0f, AE, 12, etc) that covers my light gray.

So do I need to run your reg file?

Re the shortcut to cmd.exe, what are the changes to the properties of the shortcut?

Cheers

teckneeculler said:

Thanks Pyprohly. Actually, I haven't changed any settings in the Registry yet, I was just pointing out that there's no color code (f0, 0f, AE, 12, etc) that covers my light gray.

So do I need to run your reg file?

Sure, just to satisfy my effort.

teckneeculler said:

Re the shortcut to cmd.exe, what are the changes to the properties of the shortcut?

The Properties pane. The bottom option of the context menu when selecting an item.

In the Properties pane of a Cmd.exe shortcut you should see a 'Colors' tab.