Change the color of Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)
January 1, 2000
by Snakefoot |
3 Comments
If visually impaired, then the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) can be difficult to read with its white text on blue background. It is possible to change the color of the BSOD by adding these lines to the
386enh-section of the
System.ini-file in the Windows-folder:
[386enh]
;COMMENT The following 2 lines makes the screen black and the text white
MessageBackColor=0
MessageTextColor=7
Color codes available:
| Code (Hex) | Color |
|---|
| 0 | black |
| 1 | blue |
| 2 | green |
| 3 | cyan |
| 4 | red |
| 5 | magenta |
| 6 | yellow/brown |
| 7 | white |
| 8 | gray |
| 9 | bright blue |
| A | bright green |
| B | bright cyan |
| C | bright red |
| D | bright magenta |
| E | bright yellow |
| F | white |
More Info
MS KB90740Updated: 24 September 2007
Comments:
Does not seem to work with Windows XP and above.
Sad face :(
I wanted orange background, so I could have an OSOD (oh, sod).
Bugger!
this tip only works under Win95/98/ME. the tip never worked on an NT-based Windows OS because the pre-defined BSOD colors are "hard coded" into the NT OS Kernel files (ntoskrnl.exe, ntkrnlpa.exe, etc.) and would require some editing or modifying those NT OS Kernel files in order for NT-based Windows OSes to display different BSOD colors.
see this interesting blog in japanese:
http://blog.livedoor.jp/blackwingcat/archives/972493.html
and check out these blogs by Mark Russinovich on changing BSOD colors on NT-based versions of Windows:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/01/11/3379158.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2010/12/14/3374820.aspx
there's a tool called NotMyFault which allows changing the BSOD color. the newest version of NotMyFault only works on Windows XP and newer and not older versions of Windows.