Prevent windows resizing when running a lower res fullscreen games

I have a laptop that has two graphics card (Intel Integrated 520 and GeForce 940M G), and not sure if it's the result of the first one, but whenever I run a new game it starts in a very low resolution.
Most of the modern games support 1080p (my screen's native resolution), but a lot of the older ones don't.

Whenever the game launches in fullscreen, it ends up lowering my resolution while it is running, causing every apps I have it running (explorer windows, Steam client, Firefox, Outlook, etc.) to resize into smaller windows.

Is there any way to prevent this?
Help would be much appreciated!

Running Windows 10 Pro on an i5-6200U.

Hello diltefon Welcome to the Ten Forums!

1366x768 is certainly no bargain is it? I also noticed you are a 7 Ultimate/10 Pro user having a dual boot of both versions and editions going here as well. And the games themselves since you haven't specified any particular titles may actually lack the 1920x1080 while still offer the lower 1600x900.

Games like those however tend to be more desktop orientated however while one blog for another OS mentions a rather unknown anti-liasing option that brings up a game's resolution higher then the actual max res supported by the display itself and then drops it realistically to the native resolution providing a better outcome. The main problem however is that depending on the game(s)'s own requirements and gpu demands laptops often lack in this area unless built as gaming machines.

The blog for that can be seen at Group

Generally when going to start up anything full screen you first close everything else up in order to prevent interference to or by the full screen or app with anything else. Since gaming tends to grab up the GPU time as well as the normal expected cpu time you would want to see those resources made available if you are running into these problems with other things open first end those processes.

Now one alternative for managing things in order to allow other programs to run in the background while gaming would be to run the game itself in the windowed mode! With Steam titles you set the options in those for the "Run in window" mode or full screen with a dropdown item to select from. You can also add onto the end of the command line option to see window as well as no borders. You may have to look over any support information available or hit the Alt-Enter key combo on the oldest titles to see the game become a window.

The last option would be to reduce the main display resolution when planning to spend time gaming to find the happy medium during play time and then go back to the native once you are finished for the normal desktop. The windowed mode however allows games to run without conflict with other apps that demand the native resolution be kept the same at all times. With a few old titles the only drawback is seen when paused in the windowed mode and not being able to move the cursor over to something else unless you exit the game while Steam titles and 3rd party developer mods run in windows can be paused and allow you to tend to other things.

I could have one of those paused right now and you would never know it since I can go open up any browser window while having one paused as well as not suffer any display problems while on a laptop trimming the excess being these other apps is what would be the most help for you. Here I am on a desktop with a separate 1tb video card while there you are taxing the onboard integrated graphics and have to keep that in mind.

Easy enough to find besides the Steam Community site the Steam Support site would be the first place to look. Here I ran into the commands on a thread at the Steam forums when then looking and finding you could add things into the launch options from the Steam Library>Game in use properties screen>Launch options there.



You will note the "-32-num_edicts 2047" portion of the text is for something else entirely while the "-sw" is for the windowed mode part you can set in the properties for the default launch as well as the "-noborder" portion for not seein the slide bar type borders themselves wrapped around the game's window.

Now here's a snip from the ingame menu option being a Half Life 2 3rd party developer mod being run in a window with the option found in the mod's own options as well as in the original HL and HL2 games and episodes. Likewise you would need to look for this type of setting in each game by itself or try the launch option in the properties screen.

Well certainly finding that up that high is a concern but I suspect more of an OEM issue rather then a 10 issue since the company wanted to spruce things up on their new 10 models! Unfortunately the end user like yourself is who ends up suffering from it!

You see by default even with the Windows Insider Previews builds being run here on both desktops and VMs the DPI is found to be set for 150. You would think the OEMs knowing this would have found a way to compensate for it.