Peter Mount's Blog
Various ramblings on virtually everything

Sunday, January 04, 2009

How to change the Blue Screen of Death into another colour

We have all had a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) when something catastrophic has happened with Windows - which is usually when you try to do anything useful, but if you get tired of it being the standard Blue or if you have a visual imparement so the default settings are useless for you, here’s how to change it. First open the SYSTEM.INI file found in the %systemroot% folder (usually C:\Windows) and locate the [386enh] section. Add the following two entries if they are not present: MessageBackColor= MessageTextColor= Each of those entries take a single hexadecimal digit defining the colour:
  • 0 - Black
  • 1 - Blue
  • 2 - Green
  • 3 - Cyan
  • 4 - Red
  • 5 - Magenta
  • 6 - Yellow
  • 7 - White
  • 8 - Grey
  • 9 - Bright blue
  • A - Bright green
  • B - Bright cyan
  • C - Bright red
  • D - Bright magenta
  • E - Bright yellow
  • F - Bright white
So to change it to Cyan and bright white text, then use the following: MessageBackColor=3 MessageTextColor=F The settings will take effect the next time you restart Windows. NB: The values must be in upper case hence using F and not f in the above example.

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