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# INFO: Setting the Console Configuration

Article ID: 105674

Article Last Modified on 11/21/2006

APPLIES TO

- Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface, when used with:
  - Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1
  - Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
  - Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
  - Microsoft Windows 2000 Standard Edition
  - Microsoft Windows XP Professional

This article was previously published under Q105674

## SUMMARY

To create a command prompt with custom features such as

Settings
Fonts
Screen Size and Position
Screen Colors

create a new entry in the Program Manager for CMD.EXE (suppose that the description is CUSTOM), or a shortcut named custom if you are using NT4 or later), choose these items from the CMD system menu, and select Save Configuration in each dialog box. The settings are saved in the registry under

       HKEY_CURRENT_USER\
                 Console\
                 custom

and are used when starting the CUSTOM command prompt from the Program Manager or when specifying:

`start "custom"`

This behavior is really a convenient side effect of

`start <string>`

which sets the title in the window title bar. When you create a new console window with the START command, the system looks in the registry and tries to match the title with one of the configurations stored there. If it cannot find it, it defaults to the values stored in:

       HKEY_CURRENT_USER\
                 Console\
           Configuration

This functionality can be duplicated in your own applications using the registry application programming interface (API).
For more information, please see the "Registry and Initialization Files" overview and the REGISTRY sample.

Additional query words: 3.10 3.50

Keywords: kbinfo kbconsole kbkernbase KB105674