XP Screen resolution

cyrusdvirus

Morning chaps and chappettes

Was just wondering if there's a quick and easy way to lock in a screen resolution for a particular profile in XP?

My mothers eyesight isn't quite what it used to be and I want to lock her screen resolution at 800*600. However, my younger brother also uses this pc and he gets upset if its not at 1024*768.

The machine is a Dell Dimension 4600, and will be getting replaced early into the new year

unnameduser

You can use group policy to hide the settings tab in the Display console. Therefore he cannot change the resolution.

Hit start and run and type gpedit.msc Take a look under User Config -> Admin Templates -> Control Panel -> Display and enable "Hide settings tab".

You might want to write this location down in case you forget how to do this because you will not be able to see the settings tab either.

For as long as he doesnt know group policy or cant find the appropriate registry settings (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ControlPanel\Settings\Video) you should be ok.

cyrusdvirus

Thanks for that. Found another way on the net though which will keep both of them happy

This is from someone's blog

Some random chap wrote:

The Solution (XP/Vista)
I don't know any "native-to-Vista" way to allow different profiles to log in and automatically maintain different screen display resolutions. I did find some $ apps that claimed they could do this, but I am cheap and wanted something VERY easy with no configurations; just an easy way to toggle and switch between two different screen resolution settings for the display.
I had a hunch that night while chewing this over I could make a batch-file and maybe automate a registry setting change, but ended up with a slightly different fix.
I located a freeware utility ResSwitch & ResCopy v1.22 which works great on both XP and Vista. It is a command-line application that allows changes to be made on the screen depth and resolution. It is a miniscule-sized application (6K) and doesn't require installation.
1. I just downloaded the zip file, and unpacked it into a shared "Public" folder.
2. Next I made two shortcuts to the program and placed them on Dad's desktop.
3. Then I edited the icon properies for each one as follows.
4. For the first one I edited the target line of the icon's properties to read (after the path section) "ResSwitch.exe 800 600 32 60" then saved it. I then named it "Set M's display size".
5. For the second one I edited the target line of the icon's properties to read (after the path section) "ResSwitch.exe 1280 1024 32 60" then saved it. I then named it "Set Dad's display size".
The first two numbers after the exe are for the display resolution values, the third number is the color-bit level (8, 24, 32), and the last is the refresh rate which I got from looking at the advanced display properties to see what the system was already using. That's it!
I clicked on M's and it instantly resized the display to 800x600 with no prompts or extra dialogs.
I clicked on Dad's and it instantly resized the display to 1280x1024 with no prompts or extra dialogs.
Now Dad just needs to click his icon to instantly set his display, then click M's when he is done and before he logs off.
On the drive home from Tyler to Houston, it struck me I probably could have made it even more simpler. Had I copied that shortcut into her "Startup" folder and Dad's into his "Startup" folder, it would have launched automatically when they logged in to their own profiles. But alas, I didn't do that.

unnameduser

Cool