VidRes - A Video Resolution Switching Utility for Windows 95
VidRes is a free utility that enables you to quickly switch the display resolution of your machine without making the change permanent. I hope that its operation is straight forward.
Installation
Copy VidRes.exe to a suitable sub-directory and create a shortcut to it on your desktop.
Requirements
Windows 95 and MFC30.DLL for run-time support.
Use
The default operation of VidRes (invoked without any command line parameters) displays a simple dialog box containing a list of all the possible display resolutions. VidRes prefaces each item with a display mode number that you can use directly with VidRes by passing the mode number as a command line parameter. Items with a marker '╢' indicate that Windows can switch directly to that mode without you having to restart your machine. It's these marked modes that you are likely to want to use. If you choose to use an unmarked mode, VidRes prompts you that it needs to make the change permanent and will ask you to restart your machine.
Use VidRes interactively to find the mode numbers you want to use. Then, create desktop shortcuts with the mode number as a command line parameter so that you can easily switch between the modes you use.
For example I have 2 items:
"E:\vidres\vidres.exe 2" that switches my display to standard VGA mode, and
"E:\vidres\vidres.exe 4" that switched to 1024x768 resolution.
Notes
One minor drawback (or feature) that I have not been able to work around yet is the automatic re-sizing of the desktop that takes place. For example, if you have shortcuts placed over a high resolution desktop, and switch to a lower resolution, Windows moves the shortcuts to fit the reduced desktop size. I get around this by restricting myself to placing desktop icons to the smallest (std. VGA) resolution that I use.
I have limited testing facilities, but on the machines I have tried, it has shown that the display drivers report some resolutions that do not seem to really exist (most notably the 640x400 resolutions). When you switch to one of these resolutions you are actually switching to a different resolution (640x400 = 640x480). Later builds of Windows 95 display drivers are removing these "ghost" modes.
I have had one report of VidRes not finding any display modes on an IBM ThinkPad portable. Thanks to Mike Warriner [100020,3705] for reporting and fault finding on that, it appears to be a problem with the machine not working with the API routines used).
I do not know if the API's used in VidRes are specific to Windows 95, they certainly do not exist in Windows NT V3.5. If anyone has access to Windows NT V3.51 can you let me know if it works there.
Thanks to those of you who joined in with my initial question on this subject - I hope you all find VidRes useful.
If you have any problems, comments or suggestions for improvements, do not hesitate to let me know. Let me know also how you use VidRes, it's always interesting to see how people actually use your ideas!
Thanks
Dave Lowndes
Revision History
25 April 1995
Added code to find the current video mode & set the list box current item accordingly.
Added Windows restart code for those video modes that require it.
Added double click on list box item to switch without having to choose OK.
Fixed command line processing to allow for possible spaces in directory path. Thanks to Andy Farrow [100304,3127] for pointing this one out to me.
1 May 1995
Move embedded strings to resource file.
Build as MFC in a DLL to reduce executable size.
2 May 1995
Change from using GetCommandLine() to good old argc & argv.
