Force fullscreen games to in window mode?

I have a few games that don't offer window mode in the options.

Is there any way to force the games to play in window mode instead of fullscreen?

Going to .exe's properties checking the compability doesn't help either.

Any ideas on what I can do to fix this?

Solution 1:

Perhaps not surprisingly, it depends entirely on the game(s). A solution that works for one game may not work for another, so you’ll have to see what works for whichever games you want to force windowed.

• Some games natively support a windowed mode

  • Through the options menu
  • An in-game window-restore button ()
  • Via a command-line option (e.g., -window)
  • Via the Alt+Enter hotkey
  • By editing a configuration file
  • etc.

• Running it in a virtual-machine (DOSBox, VirtualBox, VMWare, VirtualPC, etc.) may be a practical solution depending on the game and what kind of performance profile it has.

• Another option is to run the game with a graphics emulator/wrapper that intercepts calls to DirectX/OpenGL/Glide/etc.

  • D3DWindower

    

  • Glide wrapper

    

  • DirectX OpenGL Wrapper

    

  • DXWnd (single-image window-forcing tutorial)