Forcing windowed mode in Vista?

[koda]

I'm trying to run these fullscreen applications in windowed mode and I just can't figure it out. I know there's gotta be a way. I've tried creating shortcuts and appending -w., -win, -windowed, etc., onto the end of the target to no avail. I found some program called "dxwnd" that's supposed to force any program that uses DirectX into a window, but it hasn't been working out for me either - not to mention it only supports up to DX9.

It seems like there's gotta be a way to do this. Anyone have any ideas?

[Dyne]

Right click the app shortcut, in the shortcut tab Run: as minimized or normal window?

[koda]

Right click the app shortcut, in the shortcut tab Run: as minimized or normal window?

For some reason it makes zero difference. All three options run these applications in fullscreen.

[Dyne]

Do you have administrator privileges?

[koda]

Do you have administrator privileges?

Yeah, I'm running these as an administrator. This is something I've been trying to figure out for quite some time, and Google hasn't been much help in the matter. Maybe it's just not meant to be.

[cka]

what apps?

edit: comedy "install xp in a vm, run apps there" suggestion

[koda]

what apps?

Well, I haven't been able to get any full screen applications windowed unless there's an explicit option for it within the application itself.

I wouldn't mind having an old Win98 SP2 machine off to the side. That'd probably make things easier.

[Advocate]

alt+enter usually works for me.

[outRider]

You can't actually do this reliably unless the game supports it, and some games do not want to be run in a window, regardless of which OS you're on. Even those dxwnd hacks aren't guaranteed to work if the game relies on fullscreen-only DX features and such.