Screen REsize Utility

[compressor stall]

I have the usual wide screen on my personal laptop and I am running The Airbus LPC FOVE program on it. This program has to run in 1024*768, but my normal resolution is 1280*800. If I don't change the resolution, the program is useless as there are some boxes at the bottom that are cut off.

The program also occupies the whole screen (ie no windows bar across the bottom).

Without going into the Control panel> display > resize before I launch the program and reversing that afterwards, is there another small program or automatic resizer that will change the res when that program is launched and change it back afterwards?

If it's not automatic, how about a small icon on the desktop that you click on and it automatically changes it (even more simple than a shortcut to display).

Thaks in advance.

CS

[Saab Dastard]

Your graphics card software may already have a utility to do that. For example, the NVidia drivers come with a control panel, and you can easily change the settings from there (system tray).

You can probably find others with google, but here's a freeware utility to do what you want:

http://www.codeproject.com/tips/resswitch.asp

It's a command line utility that can be run as a desktop shortcut.

SD

[compressor stall]

Thanks, that would be perfect for what I want - a shortcut on the desktop: double click and presto 1024*768. Click it (or another) again and its back to 1280*800. Magic also for projectors!

Only thing is I have downlaoded the files, and I am not a computer programmer so I am struggling a bit. I will report back if any success or failure.

[compressor stall]

No luck...I have installed the dlls as per instructions, and have the extracted files in a folder. Whenever I click on the file it says it needs the four parameters... How do I put these in? Do I need to program this in C++? If so I haven't the foggiest....

Thanks... CS

[Saab Dastard]

CS,

All you need are 2 files, Resswitch.exe and reslist.exe. Both of these are in the "Release" folder.

Copy these to a convenient location - e.g. C: \myfolder, or Programfiles\Resswitch.

Now open a cmd window (Run, Cmd). Type C: \myfolder\reslist.exe to see all the supported graphics modes for YOUR card - these will probably scroll very fast, but you can just use the slider bar to see further up the list. Or use the > function to pipe the output to a text file e.g. reslist.exe > c: \myfolder\reslist.txt

Make a note of the format of the 2 resolutions you want, e.g.

1280 1024 32 60 and 1024 768 32 60. Note that the numbers are the H-res, V-res, colour depth and refresh rate.

You should check your current refresh rate and colour depth before making any changes.

Now create a text file in C: \myfolder called 1024.bat - the content will be one line:

C: \myfolder\resswitch.exe 1024 768 32 60

(the precise statement depends on your settings and requirements). Now create another file called 1280.bat, with similar settings, but 1280 1024 32 60 as the parameters.

Finally, create a desktop shortcut for each batch (.bat) file.

Now you should just be able to click and change!

Yes, you could create a more sophisticate script file that gave you a choice of resolutions (press 1 for 1024, press 2 for 1280, etc.), but I really didn't feel up to explaining that...

SD

[compressor stall]

Thanks SD.

I completed all the tasks faithfully and it worked. Except I need to reboot the computer for the graphics to take effect, which kind of defeats the purpose of doing it quickly!

After much more rummaging, I have just found a screen resize program that lives in the task bar that you can right click on then select your screen size. Here http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/FastRes_12673_p/

It will be fine for what I need. Thanks for your help though with the other project - I learned a little about the cmd, piping and txt outputs!

[Saab Dastard]

Except I need to reboot the computer for the graphics to take effect, which kind of defeats the purpose of doing it quickly

Interesting - not required on my system at all!

SD