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How to disable the auto-adjust for screen resolution in XP?

Zones: Computer Displays / Monitors, Windows XP Operating System, LCD & Plasma

Tags: resolution, screen, auto, adjust, xp

Is there a registry key that can be modified that prevents the screen resolution from auto adjusting? I need to maintain a resolution of 1024x768 for all users. However, when another user logs on to the PC, the resolution auto adjusts to 1280x1024 since the PC is connected to a 19" monitor. The PC is running Win XP SP2.

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8.8

Question Stats

Zone: Computer Hardware

Question Asked By: espritdecorps

Solution Provided By: crabbon

Participating Experts: 3

Solution Grade: B

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Comment by JulianMcGeoch

We had this problem. It seems to mainly be intel graphics drivers that cause the issue. XP will never store the screen resolution settings per user only per machine. however intel's driver seems to add its own registry key for per user.
this can be found in HKCU\software\intel
in this registry key has the users resolution settings and therefore can carry it around with them.
if you cannot view the affected users registry because you have locked it down do a load hive into your registry. a technical document on microsofts web site on how to do that is KB146050.
Now after 4 hours of backwards enginering intel's drivers i finally found the program that causes this setting to be put into the users registry.
- Type regedit into run on the start menu
- Go to key HKLM\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\run and delete the key HotKeysCmds
- Reboot
to prevent this from happening in the first place before you acctually install the graphics driver do this -
- Extract the intel graphics drivers
- In the win2000 folder there will be a file called ialmnt5.inf, edit this file
- Put a ; in front of the line HKLM,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run,HotKeysCmds,,%11%"\hkcmd.exe"
- take out the ; from HKLM,"%CUIDeviceIndependentKey%\igfxsrvc\resources","2658",,"Disable"
- Install the graphics driver.
- Check that the key in manual fix is not there

Now there is no where on the face of the planet or internet that has this technical document. there are loads of people with this problem but every answer is XP doesn't do that. they are right its Intel instead.
Note i have only seen this on intel's drivers so if you havent got an intel then try and stop hkcmd.exe from running in msconfig. thats the file that causes the issue.

20080723-EE-VQP-34