Customizing Your Command Prompt

[Oompa]

Recently I was screwing around in my registry and made my Command Prompt do some pretty cool things. So I figured I should share this knowledge with others. So I made this guide.

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Colors and such

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First Open up Command Prompt (Start > Run > cmd). Then Right click on the Title Bar and click Properties. Now it's time for customization.

The Options tab has various options.. Duh

The Font tab lets you edit your Font size and font type (only 2 available for me, I don't know how to add more to the list).

The Layout tab lets you edit how you want your Command Prompt Window sized when you open it.

The Colors tab lets you edit the colors of Command Prompt. You can select the colors on the bar or make your own color by mixing Color Values.

Once you have made the changes you want click OK and select "Save Properties for future windows with the same title". Then click OK again.

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AutoRun

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Inside the registry there is value that lets you add some commands that will run when Command Prompt starts. To take advantage of this I have made a .reg file that edits this. To make one of your own (completely customizeable) copy and paste the stuff between the lines into notepad

Start copying after this line

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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor]

"AutoRun"="title TITLE HERE &&prompt $s$p$b$s&& cd \ &&cls &&ECHO. &&ECHO Startuptext"

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Stop copying before that line

Now ignore everything except "title TITLE HERE &&prompt $s$p$b$s&& cd \ &&cls &&ECHO. &&ECHO Startuptext". That is the part we will be editing.

The first think you see is "title TITLE HERE". The "title" tells Command Prompt to change it's title to what ever follows it (until &&prompt). So just change TITLE HERE to what ever you want Command Prompt's Title to be. You can also do things such as %username% to display the username of who is logged on. Just experiment.

Second we see "&&prompt $s$p$b$s&& cd \". "&&prompt $s$p$b$s&&" tells Command Prompt to do what ever is after it. This includes executing files. Right now it just changes the directory to C:\ or what ever drive letter Windows is installed on.

Last we see "&&cls &&ECHO. &&ECHO Startuptext". "&&cls" clears the screen so it's blank. Then "&&ECHO. &&ECHO Startuptext" puts some text at the top of the window. Change Startuptext to a custom message at the top of your Command Prompt.

All these commands can be deleted. So if you don't want to change it's title just delete the title command and what ever text is inbetween it and the next command.

Now save the file. Click File > Save As. Change "Save As File Type" to All Files and File name to commandprompt.reg. Save it to your Desktop. Now double click commandprompt.reg on your desktop. It will ask you if you want to add to the registry. Click yes. Now start up Command Prompt to see your changes.

Don't blame me if something goes wrong. I have attached a .reg file to the bottem of the post that changes everything back to default. Just unzip it and run the Default Command Prompt.reg. Here's how mine turned out:

[Edit]This is my first guide so if there's something that should be done differntly please tell me. Thanks[/Edit]