How to change Screen buffer size in Windows Command Prompt from batch script

Question

I was just searching for an answer to this exact question, come to find out the command itself adjusts the buffer!

mode con:cols=140 lines=70

The lines=70 part actually adjusts the Height in the 'Screen Buffer Size' setting, NOT the Height in the 'Window Size' setting.

Easily proven by running the command with a setting for 'lines=2500' (or whatever buffer you want) and then check the 'Properties' of the window, you'll see that indeed the buffer is now set to 2500.

My batch script ends up looking like this:

@echo off
cmd "mode con:cols=140 lines=2500"

I was just giving a try for max lines on windows 7 i can set using mode con command and found it to be 32766 2^15-2 and you can set it with following command

mode con lines=32766

although you can set screen buffer size from the GUI too, but the max you can get is 9999.

mode con lines=32766

sets the buffer, but also increases the window height to full screen, which is ugly.

You can change the settings directly in the registry :

:: escape the environment variable in the key name
set mySysRoot=%%SystemRoot%%

:: 655294544 equals 9999 lines in the GUI
reg.exe add "HKCU\Console\%mySysRoot%_system32_cmd.exe" /v ScreenBufferSize /t REG_DWORD /d 655294544 /f

:: We also need to change the Window Height, 3276880 = 50 lines
reg.exe add "HKCU\Console\%mySysRoot%_system32_cmd.exe" /v WindowSize /t REG_DWORD /d 3276880 /f

The next cmd.exe you start has the increase buffer.

So this doesn't work for the cmd.exe you are already in, but just use this in a pre-batch.cmd which than calls your main script.

Below is a very simple VB.NET program that will do what you want.

It will set the buffer to 100 chars wide by 1000 chars high. It then sets the width of the window to match the buffer size.

Module ConsoleBuffer
  Sub Main()
    Console.WindowWidth = 100
    Console.BufferWidth = 100
    Console.BufferHeight = 1000
  End Sub
End Module

UPDATE

I modified the code to first set Console.WindowWidth and then set Console.BufferWidth because if you try to set Console.BufferWidth to a value less than the current Console.WindowWidth the program will throw an exception.

This is only a sample...you should add code to handle command line parameters and error handling.

There's a solution at CMD: Set buffer height independently of window height effectively employing a powershell command executed from the batch script. This solution let me resize the scrollback buffer in the existing batch script window independently of the window size, exactly what the OP was asking for.

Caveat: It seems to make the script forget variables (or at least it did with my script), so I recommend calling the command only at the beginning and / or end of your script, or otherwise where you don't depend on a session local variable.