ResSwitch & ResCopy v1.24 2 freeware utilities including MFC source code to enumerate and change displays modes

Tired of using the Windows Control panel to quickly change your graphics cards display mode. This program uses the command line sent to it, to change the display mode. With this structure you can create a number of shortcuts to ResSwitch on your desktop using different command lines which will allow you to change mode with a simple double click on your desktop. By setting up shortcut keys in the shortcut file to ResSwitch you can quickly change modes by just using the keyboard only.

Also included is ResCopy which is a simple dialog based app which lists all the display devices and available display modes which ResSwitch can use. It also allows a filename to be specified via its command line, using this will just output the available display devices and display modes to that file a line at a time without displaying the dialog.

Included in the download is the source code to the ResSwitch, and ResCopy apps, and some MFC classes to wrap access to the two underlying API's ResSwitch and ResCopy uses and a prebuilt binary version of both programs. The enclosed binary requires that you have the MFC 6 DLLs already installed. If you haven't already got them on your machine (MFC42.DLL in your Windows system directory), then grab them from http://www.naughter.com/download/vcredist.exe

Usage

• To use the class in your code simply include videomod.cpp in your project and #include videomod.h in which ever of your modules needs to make calls to the class.
• Your code will need to include MFC either statically or dynamically.
• To see the class in action, have a look at the code in the main function in the module "ResCopy.cpp" or the Winmain function in the module "ResSwitch.cpp".
• ResSwitch includes a comprehensive set of the parameters to customize the call the the underlying ChangeDisplaySettingsEx API. The full list is:
  
  ResSwitch [/WIDTH:width] [/HEIGHT:height] [/FREQ:frequency] [/DEPTH:depth] [POSITIONX:positionX /POSITIONY:positionY] [/DEVICE:device] [/DETACH] [/PRIMARY] [/TEST]  [/UPDATEREGISTRY] [/NORESET] [/GLOBAL] [/RESET]
   

  Parameter	Description
  Width	The new width of the display in pixels. Corresponds to DEVMODE::dmPelsWidth.
  height	The new height of the display in pixels. Corresponds to DEVMODE:dmPelsHeight
  frequency	The new display frequency to use in hertz. Corresponds to the DM_DISPLAYFREQUENCY flag.
  depth	The new color depth to set. e.g. 4 for 16 colors, 8 bits for 256 colors, or 16 bits for 65,536 colors, 24 for 16 million colors etc
  positionX	The X coordinate in pixels to set the location of a display device in a multi monitor setup. Corresponds to DEVMODE::dmPosition::x
  positionY	The Y coordinate in pixels to set the location of a display device in a multi monitor setup. Corresponds to DEVMODE::dmPosition::y
  device	The name of the display device on which this operation should take place. Please use ResCopy to obtain the list of possible devices in a multi monitor setup.
  detach	Specifying this flag causes the specified display device to be detached / deactivated.
  primary	Specifying this flag causes the specified display device to be made the primary display device. Corresponds to the CDS_SET_PRIMARY flag.
  test	Specifying this flag causes the operation to only be tested for success as opposed to actual doing the operation. Corresponds to the CDS_TEST flag.
  updateregistry	Specifying this flag causes the new settings to be updated in the registry. Corresponds to the CDS_UPDATEREGISTRY flag.
  noreset	Specifying this flag causes the new settings to be updated in the registry, but will not take effect. Corresponds to the CDS_NORESET flag.
  global	Specifying this flag causes the new settings to be updated in the registry so that it will affect all users on the machine and not just for the current user. Corresponds to the CDS_GLOBAL flag.
  reset	Specifying this flag causes the new settings to be changed, even if the requested settings are the same as the current settings. Corresponds to the CDS_RESET flag.

Copyright

• You are allowed to include the source code in any product (commercial, shareware, freeware or otherwise) when your product is released in binary form.
• You are allowed to modify the source code in any way you want except you cannot modify the copyright details at the top of each module.
• If you want to distribute source code with your application, then you are only allowed to distribute versions released by the author. This is to maintain a single distribution point for the source code.
• The executable files themselves, namely "ResCopy.exe" and "ResSwitch.exe" can be freely redistributed by anyone.

History

v1.1 (25 September 1997)

• Changed name "QuickerRes" to "QRes" to avoid conflict with an similarly named third party product.
• Now supports setting the monitor frequency (NT only according to the documentation).
• Inclusion of a new console mode program called QList (binary & source code) with enumerates all the video modes available. Comes in helpful if QRes is reporting that some options you select is unavailable.

v1.2 (4 January 1999)

• Changed name (yet again) from "QRes" to "ResSwitch" to avoid conflict with another similarly named third party product.
• Source code now ships with Visual C++ 5 workspace files now as standard.
• All source code is now fully UNICODE enabled and UNICODE build configurations are now provided.
• General tidy up of the codebase.
• Full documentation is provided for the code in the form of this HTML file.

v1.21 (6 March 2000)

• Now included is ResCopy (instead of ResList) which is a simple dialog based app which lists the available video modes which ResSwitch can use. It also allows a filename to be specified via its command line, using this will just output the available video modes to that file a line at a time without displaying the dialog.

v1.22 (17 January 2001)

• ResSwitch now uses CVideoModes::ChangeVideoModePermanently instead of CVideoModes::ChangeVideoModeTemporarily. This prevents a problem which occurs on Windows 2000 where the taskbar is not repositioned correctly. Thanks to Greg Wood for spotting this problem.
• Now includes copyright message in the source code and documentation.

v1.23 (2 April 2007)

• Updated copyright details.
• Updated the documentation to use the same style as the web site.
• Optimized CVideoMode constructor code
• Replaced call to _tprintf in GetCurrentVideoMode with a TRACE call.
• Made the ResSwitch app unicode compliant.
• Updated the code to clean compile on VC 2005
• Now includes support for multiple monitors / display devices. This is achieved through the use of the newly provided CDisplayDevices class
• GetAvailableVideoModes method now allows the device name to be specified for which display modes are to be obtained and the method has been renamed to just GetAvailable.
• GetCurrentVideoMode has been renamed to the more appropriate name of GetCurrentForPrimaryDisplay
• Removed RevertVideoModeToDefault, ChangeVideoModePermanently, ChangeVideoModeTemporarily, CanChangeVideoMode, ReportChangeVideoErrorValue and CreateCompatibleDEVMODE methods as they did not provide any useful encapsulation over calling the ChangeDisplaySettings SDK call directly. You can now think of the various classes in the Videomod module as a simple wrapper for enumerating the display devices and their associated display modes.
• Added a m_dwDisplayFlags value to the CVideoMode class.
• CAvailableVideoModes class is now called CAvailableDisplayModes.
• CVideoMode class is now called CDisplayMode
• CVideoModes class is now called CAvailableDisplayModes
• Updated the documentation to use the same style as the web site.
• Reworked ResCopy example to use a tree control to display all the details about all display devices, their attributes and available display modes
• Addition of version infos to both exes included in the download.
• Reworked ResSwitch application to provide a much more comprehensive set of command line parameters as well a general rework of its codebase.

v1.24 (12 March 2008)

• Updated copyright details.
• Fixed a bug in CMyCommandLineInfo::ParseParam in ResSwitch.cpp where the /DEVICE command line parameter was being parsed incorrectly. Thanks to Ron Cozad for reporting this bug.
• Removed VC 6 style comments from the code base.
• Updated the code to clean compile on VC 2008

API Reference

The API consists of the public member functions of the simple classes CDisplayDevice, CDisplayMode, CAvailableDisplayDevices & CAvailableDisplayModes

CAvailableDisplayDevices::Get
CAvailableDisplayModes::GetCurrentForPrimaryDisplay
CAvailableDisplayModes::GetAvailable
 

CAvailableDisplayDevices::Get

static BOOL CAvailableDisplayDevices::Get(CDisplayDevices& devices);

Return Value

TRUE if the display devices was retrieved successfully otherwise FALSE.

Parameters

devices Upon successful return this will contain an array representing all the display devices enumerated.

CAvailableDisplayModes::GetCurrentForPrimaryDisplay

static BOOL CAvailableDisplayModes::GetCurrentVideoMode(CDisplayMode& mode);

Return Value

TRUE if the display mode for the primary display was retrieved successfully otherwise FALSE.

Parameters

mode Upon successful return this will contain the current video mode of the primary display.

Remarks

Internally this retrieves the current settings GetDeviceCaps function on a device context for the primary display. Note that because the code is using GetDisplayCaps the returned display mode will not have any DisplayFlags set. If you want to find the Display Flags for the primary display, then call CAvailableDisplayDevices::Get and find the display device in the returned array which has the DISPLAY_DEVICE_PRIMARY_DEVICE flag set.

CAvailableDisplayModes::GetAvailable

static BOOL CVideoModes::GetAvailable(LPCTSTR pszDeviceName, CDisplayModes& modes);

Return Value

TRUE if the available video modes were retrieved successfully otherwise FALSE.

Parameters

pszDeviceName The display device name to get its display nodes. This value should be taken from CDisplayDevice::m_sDeviceName or left NULL if you want to retrieve the the display modes for the primary display.

modes Upon successful return this will contain an array containing all the available display modes of the specified display device.

Contacting the Author

PJ Naughter
Email: pjna@naughter.com
Web: http://www.naughter.com
12 March 2008