Changing Color Depth

General Questions
#1

I’ve got a… errrr… a productivity app ;)… that only works with the screen set to 256 Colors. But, I don’t like working that way in general - I usualy leave things set to 24-bit color.

I’d like to create a little app (is this a “batch file”?) to:
[ol]
[li]Change the color depth[/li][li]Launch the app[/li][li]Rest the color depth when I quit the app[/ol][/li]
I know this would be pretty simple on the Mac - I’ve written AppleScripts before. But I need this to work on my Win98 PC.

Anyone know how?

#2

You didn’t say if you were going through Display Properties to change the color depth, but assuming you are, you can get a little taskbar app called QuickRes, made by Microsoft and on their website somewhere, that will let you simply right-click the icon and select a new resolution and color depth from a pop-up menu. Not as convenient as a batch file doing it automatically for your ga—uh, productivity app, but it’s a lot less hassle than the ol’ right-clicking the desktop way.

#3

It may be a bit of work but you should also be able to create an app in VB or C (or C++ or whatever) and change the applicable registry key.

#4

I’m not sure exactly what QuickRes entails but if all you want is a system tray icon that has a menu to change resolutions or color depth, it’s built into the display properties (at least for Win98). It can be found at:

Display Properties > Settings > Advanced > General

Check the box that says “Display settings icon in task bar”.

#5

Actually, this is what I was after. Once it’s installed, you just right-click on any shortcut icon to change its properties… there’s a new tab called Qres that lets you tell Qres to change resolution when launching the app and change it back when you’re done.

Cool.