MS-DOS Shell Colors May Blink on CGA Display (75130)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 5.0
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 5.0a
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.0
This article was previously published under Q75130

SYMPTOMS

If you run MS-DOS Shell on a system using a CGA monitor, some colors may blink.

RESOLUTION

Possible solutions to this situation are to re-expand the video files, remove the "bright" color selections if they are unsupported, and to refresh the screen within Shell. These options are described below:

  • Expand the CGA files for MS-DOS Shell to the MS-DOS directory. In some cases, Setup detects a different graphics card and expands the wrong graphics support with MS-DOS Shell. Check to see what kind of monitor is present, then expand the appropriate files. The proper files for each type of monitor are listed in the MS-DOS 5.0 "Microsoft MS-DOS Getting Started" manual.
  • Some CGA cards don't support the bright colors. Any color scheme listed in the DOSSHELL.INI file that has a bright prefix blinks if bright colors are not supported by the CGA card. To prevent these colors from blinking, use a color scheme that does not include bright colors, or edit the color schemes in the DOSSHELL.INI file to remove the bright prefix on the colors.
  • If you have a screen saver loaded and task swapping is enabled, when you swap applications, the colors may blink. Press SHIFT+F5 to refresh the screen and eliminate the blinking.
For more information on setting colors within Shell, query on the following words in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

dosshell and color

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:10/14/2003
Keywords:KB75130
©2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.