Windows 10: FYI: Win10 21H1 and Command Prompt Colors

Early this morning, I upgraded my Windows 10 Professional installation to feature version 21H1. I have been running all day, with no significant things to report except one minor annoyance that I solved easily. The annoyance is that the Colors tab, which one would expect to be the place to go to set the text and background colors of a Command Prompt (cmd.exe) window, appears to remain, but only for show (more or less). You can change colors in that tab all day long, and your display remains stubbornly white text on a black background. Visit the Terminal tab, which has been there since Microsoft went all in on Linux support, and you can easily change the colors to suit. Though the color selection process looks a bit different, it works quite well, and is easy to use. Now that I discovered this, my command prompt windows are restored to my preferred colors, green text on a black background, just like the good old days when we used IBM 3270 terminals and such.

:)

 

command prompt will not open in safe mode with command prompt

Would I just follow the same steps within safe mode after hooking up to the other system?

 

commands in command prompt

Many of the commands one can use in Command Prompt go back to the days of DOS/Disk Operating System. An example of how to use switches in chkdsk can be seen by typing chkdsk /? at the command prompt. There's a number of Web pages about the commands found by a Search:
dos commands list at DuckDuckGo
Some pages aimed at Win10:
windows 10 commands for command prompt at DuckDuckGo

 

Installation media boots to command prompt

I've just booted from known working install media to see exactly what it does when booting. The sequence of events is...

1. Windows logo on a black screen
2. circling dots appear beneath the logo
3. light blue 'Please wait' screen with circling dots
4. a command prompt window (very briefly)
5. the initial Setup page appears

Do you see steps 1-3? If so, it appears you have stopped at step 4, suggesting that something on the disc cannot be read.

Does the disc boot properly in another machine? If so, try cleaning the laptop's drive lens then try booting from the disc again.

If not, make new install media with Microsoft's Media Creation Tool, either as a bootable USB, on an ISO that you can burn to another disc. At Step 8 in Option One of this tutorial you can choose between making a USB or an ISO.

Download Windows 10 ISO File