I feel like such an idiot. Can anyone remind me how to set XP so new windows open full screen? The grey matter just ain’t working. Thanks.
I don’t know of a way to make all programs always open full screen.
But for any particular program, just right-click on the shortcut you use to launch it, then select “Properties”. In the dialog box which opens there’s a setting “Run:” which has a dropdown with choices “Normal”, “Minimized”, and “Maximized”. Set that to “Maximized” and click [OK]. From then on, when you click that shortcut, the program will open full screen.
Note that “shortcut” refers to both icons on the desktop and also all the entries in the Start menu. Right-click on either to adjust the properties.
But … That doesn’t cause the program to open full screen if you start it by double-clicking a file of that program’s type. e.g. double-clicking a .doc file to open Word. But in that circumstance, *most *programs will open with the window size they had when they were last closed. So if it was last closed while maximized, it’ll *probably *open the same way.
Finally, for programs that won’t cooperate with either of the above, you can try dragging the window to be as close to screen-filling as you can get it. Then close the program. That *may *set it up so it will re-open in that almost-maximized state.
Ultimately, there isn’t a single Windows OS setting because Windows is designed to let each program control its own window size. There are *suggested *behavior standards which apps are *supposed *to follow so the user’s not stuck guessing how each program will behave. But not all apps follow all the standards exactly. If you have one of those you may be stuck with how *it *wants to set window size.
Thanks for the tip. Maybe I’m just thinking of IE settings. Up all night on that pdf thing and a little punchy. I’ll play around with it a bit more.
Drag the window to full screen, as LSL Guy noted, but when you exit the window do so by clicking “File” and then “Exit,” and not by clicking on the “X” at the right.
The tool you need is Realtime Software’s UltraMon. It does exactly what you need and a lot more. You can set any program to open full screen, or even across multiple screens.
Do not accidentally get this guy. He will not help at all.
*If *the program was written to conform to Windows UI standards there will be no difference between those two actions.
If it was written to standards, you wouldn’t be doing this 2work-around at all – you would just set the run property to open maximized.
And, in that regard, I would point out that you may want to manually size the window up to the full size before using File-Exit. Some programs don’t remember their maximized status, but they do remember their window position.
Note that this takes a bit of work–you have to move the window over a bit to make it as wide as the screen, and then move it back.