I had a program made for me and I love it except that the window is
locked at 640 x 480. This was fine several years ago but as
resolutions have increased it has become relatively smaller.

I don't have the source code, only the compiled binary and the
original developer is unreachable.

Is there anything I can do to force full screen?

steve@stevenrutledge.com wrote:
A stretchy window requires a "geometry manager", which I would bet this program
does not use. If, for example, you wrote a program that grabbed the window
remotely, and called its resize method, all the controls on the window would
stay stuck in its upper left corner. A geometry manager should have repositioned
them.

You could then use WinSpy to find the ID of every control on the window, then
manage their geometry remotely.

If the program is a Win16 or Win32 SDK application, you could extract the
"resource segment" from its source, reposition the controls, and save the
segment back. An editor such as Visual Studio can do this. The resource segment
may or may not specify the size of the window, though.

Check with a programmer's users group near you - someone might like to do this
just as a challenge. But don't hold your breath, because there are any number of
reasons these attacks might not work.

steve@stevenrutledge.com wrote:
You can do everything with Win32 api
See Win32 api newsgroup (comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32)

Lucas <lucas@man.com> writes:

If that is true, one of the things that can be done is to write a
program whose main window is always 640x480. Did you intent to
suggest that there may be no solution if the program uses the Win32
API?

To the OP: re-posting to a group specific to the system in question is
a very good idea. The solution (if there is one) is likely to highly
system-specific.

--
Ben.

"steve@stevenrutledge.com" <smilestill@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4878ab0c-7008-4192-b11d-69095267ccf9@w1g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
Does it have a maximise button? (Or a system menu option to maximise). Is
there an INI or configuration file which contains the window dimensions?

If the size is hardcoded into the program, it will be more difficult, though
not impossible. Things I might try would be scanning the binary for
constants 640 and 480, and changing them. Or (for Windows) looking for calls
to CreateWindow and changing the style parameter to maximised.

But even if these gave a bigger window, all the action may still be confined
to a 640x480 region because of the way the program works.

--
bartc

An old, one-shot program written in Win32 (or Win16) SDK, which displays a
window of a fixed size, is very probably a dialog box...

It does not have a an option to maximize (that button is greyed out).
What would I use to "scan through the binary?"

Steve

On Jun 20, 4:05 pm, "Bartc" <b...@freeuk.com> wrote:

"steve@stevenrutledge.com" wrote:

Use a hex (hexadecimal) editor. MS-DOS had a thing called "debug" which
might or might not be useful. If you scan the web I am sure you will find
tons of such programs of varying quality. You start by converting 640 and
480 to binary, which, by itself, would be a hassle for a civilian. I think
this approach is doomed to failure and further frustration, I would not
pursue it, even though I could follow the mechanics.