Created 4 May 2002, last updated 6 April 2003

My kids have a large library of computer games, some of which are quite old (as these things go). Newer games can properly detect and modify the display settings if they are particular, but some older programs just complain (sometimes after mis-detecting the settings).

To simplify my kids’ use of the computer, I wrote this command to change the display settings. Now I can create icons for their games which invoke batch files to call dispmode to set the display properly, and then run the game. Ah, peace!

The arguments are simple: specify either the new width (in pixels) or the new depth (in bits per pixel), or both. You don’t need to specify the height because that is determined by the width. If you leave out the width or depth, then it is unchanged. If you only specify a single number, it is a depth if it is less than 300, or a width if it is more than 300. Simple:

$ dispmode 1400
$ dispmode 800 16

The refresh rate of the display can also be adjusted by adding an argument with a “Hz” suffix:

$ dispmode 1400 60Hz
$ dispmode 1600 85Hz

There are other options:

• -l will list all allowed display modes.
• -c will show the current mode.
• -p will change the mode, and write it into the registry for next time.

Download: dispmode.exe

Want the source?

Download: dispmode.cpp