Full screen on laptop

[JDK]

I'm having difficulty getting Exult to run in full screen mode on a laptop. The lowest supported resolution available through the graphical options in Windows is 800x600, though I have been able to run some 640x480 programs in full screen with little difficulty (but to do so, I need to use a dos emulator).

When running Exult, the only way to initiate the full screen mode is through turning the resolution up to at least 640x480. If I try to lower it again at that point, it stays in full screen, but the resolution itself doesn't actually change--it just creates black spaces on the edge of the playing window. Does anyone know of a way to allow my laptop to run programs in low resolutions--particularly at 320x200--without using a dos emulator?

I also have the same problem with older games such as King's Quest VII and Gabriel Knight I (cd version)--they both run fine in windows, but there is no apparent way to run them in full screen without an emulator, which then reduces the speed to a crawl.

The laptop specs:
Toshiba Satellite M45-S269
Pentium M Processor 740: 1.73 Ghz
512MB SDRAM
100 GB HD
15.4" WXGA display screen
WinXP

[MV]

I'm having an educated guess (because my old toshiba tecra 8000 has this feature), that you need to go into the laptops BIOS and try and find a screen setting for display, and set it to stretch, so it then stretches lower resolutions natively.

[JDK]

Thanks for the suggestion MV, but it unfortunately didn't work. I checked the BIOS, and the screen setting was already set to stretch to screen size. However, I actually was able to find another way around the problem. (I'm ashamed to say that it's quite simple, and I should have tried it earlier.) By running Exult in compatibility mode in 640x480 resolution, it allows both full screen and a 320x200 resolution.

On the other hand, I tried the same thing with KQVII and Gabriel Knight, but it doesn't seem to work--they stay in a window no matter what I try. (To run the Windows version of each, it is in fact necessary to run them in Win95 compatibility mode with 640x480 and 256 colors.) I know it's a bit off topic, but does anyone know how to get both those and other older Sierra cd games to run in full screen (with the Windows installation rather than dos)?

[Brian]

I was able to get it to work on my 15.4" widescreen Vaio by modifying the resolution in the cfg file to reflect my monitor's maximum resolution (1280x800) and enabling fullscreen... the higher resolution displays more screen area, with the obvious downfall of distance enough that it's hard to distinguish small items, but I was able to go from there down to a lower resolution, which really diminishes the sharpness and quality in the character sprites... but it works.

[DarkAvatar]

I have the same problem with running older programs like that in windows XP.. because not alot of things use 640x480 for their maximun resolution any more...... so if theres a older game or program or something like that I use it on my computer because it's only running windows 2000 (it's a clunker...lol) but yeah they still have the compatibility mode where you can run things at 640x480....
(I kinda got carried away....)