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If I change the screen text color to red, the blinking underline cursor (_) stays white.

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What operating system are we talking about? Please tag accordingly. – slhck♦ Sep 13 '12 at 18:32
Command Prompt -> Microsoft Windows – mcandre Sep 13 '12 at 18:47
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That's not as obvious as you might think. Any command line can have a prompt and people often also refer to a Linux shell as a "command prompt" for lack of better knowledge. – slhck♦ Sep 13 '12 at 18:49
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The version of Windows (and bit level) also matter greatly when it comes to answering this. – techie007 Sep 13 '12 at 18:57
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Take a look at Console Emulators and ConEmu, of course. Many of them allows to change style of text cursor. – Maximus Sep 13 '12 at 19:28

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While Ansi.sys is no longer included in Windows 7, as far as I can remember it could set the foreground and background colours via escape sequences but not change the cursor colour.

I even found a replacement for Windows 7 here, but the problem remains.

I have used DOS (actual DOS, not the emulated/emasculated version in NT-based Windows versions) utilities years back such as Color Commander that could directly fiddle with the video BIOS palette to accomplish this. Besides the cursor colour, the shape and size could be changed as well, and even animated cursors were possible with a TSR. Of course, none of those programs work any longer given hardware and OS changes, so I'm not sure the cursor's colour can be changed any longer on recent versions of Windows.

Edit: If it really bothers you that much, check whether a replacement command-line environment such as 4DOS/Take Command provides this sort of feature.

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That brings back some memories! – MetalMikester Sep 13 '12 at 19:19

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