2nd May 2002
Why is your cursor flashing in the upper left-hand corner of a blacked-out screen? No, your monitor isn't busted. You're sitting at the command prompt! Or, at least, you should be for this particular tip. File associations are tricky. However, they're (kinda) easier to manage through Windows 2000 / XP. How, you ask? Well, if you know what to enter, you can get stuff done pretty quickly (even if your typing skills aren't up to scratch). Okay, let's say you want to restore the default program association for GIF files. On the command line, type: ASSOC.[EXT]= (removing the brackets and substituting the file extension instead of EXT). If the file type does not have a default association, you'll be prompted for one the next time you open it. Now, how about changing the default color scheme for future command line sessions? Launch the registry editor and cascade out to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Command Processor. Double-click the DefaultColor entry to tweak it. This entry will be in Hexadecimal code. The first character is your background color, the second character will be your foreground (text) color.