Setting the Defaults for PUTTY
September 20, 2009 by Greg Ferro · 6 Comments
Putty is is a great piece of software. Because it works and it’s free I find it installed on most corporate desktops as the default software for terminal client on Windows.1. Not many people seems to realise that Putty is highly customisable and has a number of features that will improve your working environment.
When putty starts.…
When putty starts it uses the default configuration. But where does the default configuration come from ? And how can I set the default’s for every session. This is the standard opening screen for putty:

Standard Opening Screen for Putty
Lets change the default terminal length to 40 lines instead of 24. (A more detailed discussion for WHY you would do this in Setting the Terminal Window Length)
Changing putty default window length to 40 lines
Head down to the Window Category on the left, then click into the Rows and change the value from 20 to 40.

Set the terminal length to 40 lines
Now, in the Category Window, head up to Session, and then click on Default Settings.

Save the Default Setting
Now click the SAVE button.
And then
From now on, everytime you open putty, the window will be forty lines long.
Just to be clear, anything that you change is any of the windows can be set as the default using this process.
Footnotes
- After all, Microsoft doesn’t supply any SSH in Windows or even telnet capability in Vista [back]
- IOS: enable and .… disable ?
- IOS: Setting the TCP timeout on IOS
- IOS:CLI Tip — terminal full help
- OS X:Terminal break for Serial Console on OS X
- Changing the break character in Cisco IOS
- IOS CLI: show run linenum
- IOS: Setting Terminal Window Length
- IOS: Clearing an interface configuration
- IOS: Console, Terminal, Monitor, VTY — what is what ?
- IOS: “terminal monitor” on, off — logging to your terminal
- The poor man’s IOS Traffic Generator
- Setting the Defaults for PUTTY
- Putty — Recommended Default Settings for a Network Engineer
- Putty, the Command Line and NO clicky clicky





Hi,
This is a great series of articles.
I’d just like to mention that there is a addon called Putty CM which gives you posibility for tabs for each session. It allows you put the tabs side to side or on top of each other which for troubleshooting I find quite useful,.
Give it a go. http://puttycm.free.fr/cms/
Another thumbs up for Putty CM here — the tabs feature saves all sorts of confusion when troubleshooting some issues.
- as always very useful info on your blog
– 1+ putty cm
another great feature to have configured by default is session logging — you can configure it with date and hostname placeholders — set it with “printable output” and “always append to the end of it” and always have an organized session history
I also add logging all session output to log file.
after a hour i found from google, this useful link for changing & saving the default setttings.
Thanks to author.
Vinayag