Add scroll bars to cmd.exe and command.com

Submitted by Rollie Hawk on Tue, 2006-02-21 10:30.

On a few Windows systems, I've found that by default there are no scroll bars on the side of command prompt windows for going back and reading previous input and output. This isn't a bug or a flaw, but simply a misconfiguration of the screen buffer.

To correct this, right-click on the top-left corner of the command prompt window and choose "properties." Under the "layout" tab, look for "Screen Buffer Size" and change the height setting to something arbitrarily high.

This may vary depending upon your Windows command line of choice and your version of Windows, but the problem is essentially the same.


( categories: Tips )
Rollie Hawk is a consultant, web publisher, online personality, magazine writer, web developer, network administrator, teacher, husband and father residing in southern Illinois. He graduated in 2002 from Southern Illinois University, earning his BS majoring in math with a minor in chemistry.

Rollie is a certified math teacher with endorsements in chemistry, physics, and physical science and has taught students of all age groups and abilities, ranging from grade school to the university level. In addition to math and science, he has also taught GED, job skills, and alternative high school classes (his personal favorite).

After the birth of his daughter in 2004, Rollie decided to spend more time at home. This meant leaving his teaching position and devoting his working hours exclusively to consulting, web development, and general IT work.