Two monitors are so geeky.

February 2, 2007 6:47 PM

Is there a way I can get rid of the top status bar when I'm playing games in Windowed mode?

So, I love playing games in Windowed mode because it lets me work my dual monitor setup to the maximum potential. The problem is that when I have one Window taking up the whole monitor, XP's ugly status bar (the bar with the minimuze, maximize, and close buttons on the far right) prevents the game from being truly full screen. Is there any way I can disable the status bar through a shortcut command or through some kind of control panel setting?

posted by CXImran to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Is it an online game that you can run through IE? Can you set it to run in kiosk mode? (I have never tried this, but I think that this is what they do when they demo software in stores and other public places).
posted by foxinthesnow at 8:18 PM on February 2, 2007

Er, if you want the game to take up the whole screen why are you running in windowed mode? Just hit Alt-Enter to switch to fullscreen.
posted by Rhomboid at 8:38 PM on February 2, 2007

Rhomboid: Because then the other monitor is inaccessible (mouse cursor won't leave the full-screen monitor), and possibly even goes black.

I'm not sure that this is something you can control, CXImran, if the games don't support it. World of Warcraft, for instance, has "full-screen windowed mode" built-in. It's up to each game to support this, as best I understand it.
posted by Khalad at 9:05 PM on February 2, 2007

You can grab the window title bar (the thing you're calling a status bar) near the very bottom of itself, push most of it off the top edge of the screen, then stretch the bottom of the window back to the bottom of the screen. That should give you the thinnest of borders around your gameplay window. Of course this will only work if your windows is in resizeable (not maximized) mode; you'll have to stretch it to full-screen size by hand.
posted by flabdablet at 11:33 PM on February 2, 2007

Can you make the close/min/max buttons really small in the Display control panel? You know, the sizer thing for the X (close) button. I am pretty sure that making the buttons smaller will make the top bar at least a little smaller. Also try making the Active Window Title text smaller. This doesn't totally get rid of it, but it might help if you can't find any better solutions.
posted by jbb7 at 11:35 PM on February 2, 2007

Another workaround to try: reduce the resolution on the right-hand display, or increase it on the left one. Now use the twin-display layout panel in Display Properties to align the bottoms of the two displays instead of their tops.

That should let you stretch a window on the right-hand display above the top of that display, because the virtual desktop is always a rectangle even if two different-pixel-height displays can't tile it completely; there's a little non-displayed strip for you to park the title bar in.

Getting the window controls back will involve "feeling around in the dark" until you can grab the title bar again and drag it somewhere visible, or stretching the leftmost border of the window further into the left display.
posted by flabdablet at 5:32 AM on February 3, 2007

XP's ugly status bar

You can make your whole XP look much nicer by simply going to the Display control panel -> Themes and switching it to "Windows Classic."
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 7:32 AM on February 3, 2007

you'll have to stretch it to full-screen size by hand.

There are tools for automating this process. I use hoekey to create hotkeys for standard window sizes and/or postitions that I use.
posted by Chuckles at 9:30 AM on February 3, 2007