Changing Color Depth

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?

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.

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.

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”.

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.