COLOR

Sets the default console foreground and background colours.

COLOR /?

COLOR [background_attr][foreground_attr]

Restores the colour to what it was when CMD.EXE started:

COLOR

background_attr (NT4)

foreground_attr (NT4)

Specifies colour attribute of console output.

Colour attributes are specified by TWO hex digits -- the first corresponds to the background; the second the foreground. Each digit can be any of the values:

• 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

/? (NTXP)

Display help.

CMD - Start a new CMD shell
VERIFY?
Equivalent Linux BASH commands:
dircolors - Colour setup for `ls'

Colour values are assigned in the order:

• The DefaultColor registry value.
• The CMD /T command-line switch.
• The current colour settings when cmd was launched.

The COLOR command sets ERRORLEVEL to 1 if an attempt is made to execute the COLOR command with a foreground and background colour that are the same.

White on blue:

    COLOR 17

Red on blue, use for error conditions:

    COLOR 1c

"Wordperfect style" white on light blue:

    COLOR 97

High contrast yellow on light blue:

    COLOR 9e

White on black, the default:

    COLOR 07

Invalid, will set %ERRORLEVEL% to 1 (fails on some early builds of NT 4).

    COLOR 00

• 1 Attempt to set foreground and background to same colour

External

DOS

none

Windows

none

Windows NT

NT4 NT2000 NTXP NT2003