Full Screen Command Prompt in Vista

Full Screen Command Prompt in Vista

Q: Is there any way I can get DOS applications to run with full screen under Windows Vista? I am a retired consultant from way back. I wrote many applications under DOS since that was the only operating system available. Although I am retired, to this day, I still maintain these systems with the people I developed them for. I have been able to get my DOS applications to run fine (with full screen) through Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows XP. I now have a new laptop I purchased with Windows Vista. I have not been able to get my DOS applications to run with full screen on my systems. I have tried whatever was suggested, such as installing DOSBOX and Virtual PC, without any success. I hope you can help me as Microsoft doesn't deem this an important enough problem. - Anthony Lombardo.

A: Here's one technique for opening Command Prompt in full-screen mode. It's rather odd but I've verified that it works.

Click Start and type CMD, but don't hit enter or click on cmd.exe.
Right-click cmd.exe above and choose Run as administrator.
Respond to the UAC prompt.
In the command prompt enter WMIC--you'll get a different prompt for Windows Management Instrumentation Control (but you're not going to actually DO anything with WMI).
Click the normal maximize button at top right. The Command Prompt window will fill the screen.
Enter EXIT to exit WMIC.
Right-click the Command Prompt's title bar, choose Properties, click OK.
Enter EXIT to exit the Command Prompt.
From now on Command Prompt will open at a size that fills the screen. It accomplishes this by as many rows and columns of characters as necessary to fill the screen. If that's not the kind of full-screen you wanted, you can put Command Prompt back to normal thus:

Right-click its and choose Properties.
Click the Layout tab
Set Screen Buffer Size's Width to 80
Set Window Size Width to 80
Set Window Size Height to 25
Click OK
I'm guessing that what you really want is to have the command prompt literally fill the screen without changing its 80x25 layout. In XP you can toggle this mode by pressing Alt+Enter. Doing that in Vista just gets you a message "This system does not support full-screen mode". And it's true; the Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) precludes support of the necessary video mode.

There is a kind of solution, and it's even recommended by Microsoft. They suggest replacing the driver for your graphics card with the equivalent XP video driver. You'll lose the ability to run Vista's spiffy Aero interface if you do so, but you'll gain back the ability to run full-screen DOS programs.