Improving cmd.exe

12 August 2012

While out-of-the-box features for Windows’ command interpreter (cmd.exe) have mildly improved over the years (command completion turned on by default comes to mind), the defaults are still boring. Really, really boring. And kinda ugly, too.

Beyond the boring and the ugly, however, stands the dysfunctional. A tiny scroll buffer means you will quickly and easily lose data. Mouse support is turned off by default. The window is too small by default. The font could be better…

So, to spare you, the reader, the time needed to fix all those settings, I created some shortcuts (.lnk files) that will present you with reasonable defaults. You can download them all in a zipfile, or individually select the ones you’re interested in.

Here’s a screenshot with four examples:

Four examples of colorized cmd.exe windows

And here are the individual links: