Changing the DOS colors

Are you tired of the plain White on Black screen of DOS? Most people including myself, like it this way. However on occasion, wouldn't you like to change the colors to Red on Black or White on Blue?

DOS includes a small device driver to take over the CON device. It is called ANSI.SYS. If you have Windoze 9x, it should be in C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND, otherwise it should be in C:\DOS.

Add the following line to your CONFIG.SYS: (Please make a back up first)
For Windoze 9x:
DEVICE = C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ANSI.SYS
For DOS (or where ever your ANSI.SYS file resides):
DEVICE = C:\DOS\ANSI.SYS

To change the screen colors to L. BLUE text on Black Background add the following to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file (Make a backup first):

@echo off
echo ESC[1;34;40m

NOTE: Change the ESC above to ascii char 27. (In EDIT press the CTRL-P combination and then while holding down the ALT key and using the numeric key pad, enter 27.) Make sure the m is lower case.

Now reboot the system.

Here are the different codes you can use:

ESC[?;?;?m 
  
Where the first ? = one of the following:
    Text attributes 
       0    All attributes off 
       1    Bold on/LIGHT colors
       4    Underscore (on monochrome display adapter only) 
       5    Blink on 
       7    Reverse video on 
       8    Concealed on 
  
Where the second ? = one of the following:
    Foreground colors 
       30    Black 
       31    Red 
       32    Green 
       33    Yellow 
       34    Blue 
       35    Magenta 
       36    Cyan 
       37    White 
  
Where the third ? = one of the following:
    Background colors 
       40    Black 
       41    Red 
       42    Green 
       43    Yellow 
       44    Blue 
       45    Magenta 
       46    Cyan 
       47    White