Where a windowed game appears, and how big it is, are decided on the Main tab of its DxWnd profile. The size and position fields there look trivial — four numbers — but they explain most “the window opens in the wrong place” complaints, and they work by simple desktop geometry that is worth understanding once. This guide covers setting the size, placing the window with coordinates, what happens when the game’s own resolution disagrees with the window you asked for, and how multi-monitor placement really works. It is part of our DxWnd settings guide series.
The Size Fields: What You Are Actually Setting
On the Main tab, the window size fields set the dimensions of the window DxWnd creates for the game, in pixels. Two different things then have to agree: the window on your desktop, and the resolution the game believes it is rendering at. For many classic games those are the same number, because the game renders at, say, 800×600 and the window is 800×600 — a one-to-one picture. When you ask for a window larger than the game’s rendering resolution, DxWnd scales the picture up to fill it; smaller, and it scales down. Scaling is a convenience, not free quality: an upscaled low-resolution game looks softer, and a downscaled one can make small text hard to read. The most faithful picture is usually the game’s native resolution, enlarged only as far as your screen comfortably allows.
A practical starting point: set the window to the game’s own resolution if you know it, play, and only then experiment with larger sizes. If the game still takes over the whole screen instead of opening in your window at all, that is a different failure — work through our six checks for games that stay fullscreen before tuning geometry.
Position: Coordinates Are Pixels from the Top-Left
The position fields place the window’s top-left corner using desktop coordinates: pixels counted rightwards and downwards from the top-left corner of your primary display. Position 0,0 is the very corner of the screen. A window set to X=100, Y=100 opens one hundred pixels in from the left edge and one hundred down from the top. DxWnd also lets the window be positioned more casually — many players simply drag the window where they want it — but the coordinate fields are what the profile remembers, and they are the reliable way to make a game open in the same place every time.
One detail catches people out: the coordinates describe the window, including its title bar and borders, while the game picture inside is slightly smaller than the outer frame. So a window positioned to end exactly at your screen’s edge can leave the picture a few pixels short of where you calculated. Leave a small margin rather than chasing pixel-perfection.
Centred vs Fixed Placement
Conceptually there are two placement styles. A fixed position pins the window to stored coordinates — predictable, and the right choice once you have found a spot you like, especially in multi-monitor setups. A centred placement drops the window in the middle of the screen, which is the friendliest default for a single display: no part of the window can start off-screen, and it is what most people picture when they say “windowed mode”. If a window ever opens half off the visible desktop — a classic symptom after changing monitors or resolutions — resetting the position to something safe and centred is the quickest recovery, because a window placed by stale coordinates is simply being drawn where you told it to be, on a screen that no longer exists there.
Aspect: Why the Picture Gets Stretched
Old games were drawn for the aspect ratio of their era — most often 4:3. If you set a window with a different shape, say a wide 16:9 rectangle, something has to give: either the picture stretches to fill the window (fat characters, oval circles), or it keeps its proportions and leaves unused space. Keeping the game’s original aspect ratio is the honest default; a window of 1024×768 or 1280×960 preserves 4:3 exactly while still being much larger than 640×480. When a game looks distorted, check the window’s shape before suspecting the game or the video settings — geometry mistakes masquerade as rendering bugs.
Multi-Monitor: It Is All One Coordinate Space
Windows treats your monitors as one continuous desktop coordinate space, and DxWnd’s position fields speak that language. A second monitor sitting to the right of a 1920-pixel-wide primary display begins at X=1920; to place a window on it, you give coordinates inside its range — for example X=2000, Y=100 puts the window eighty pixels into the second screen. A monitor arranged to the left of the primary lives at negative X coordinates, which is normal and not an error. There is no separate “which monitor” switch to find: position is placement, and placement is coordinates. The catch is the stale-coordinate trap from earlier — unplug a monitor and a window faithfully positioned on it becomes invisible until you reset its position, which is a geometry issue, not a hooking failure.
A Window That Fills the Screen
Geometry also enables the compromise many players actually want: a window sized and positioned to cover the whole display. Set the size to your screen’s resolution and the position to 0,0 and the game occupies the entire monitor while remaining, underneath, a window — alt-tab stays instant, overlays and second screens keep working, and the game never performs the slow, flickery mode-switch of true exclusive fullscreen. It looks like fullscreen and behaves like a window, and it is achieved with nothing but the size and position fields already described. If a specific game fights even this — reasserting its own fullscreen mode over your geometry — that is a hooking behaviour problem, and the still-fullscreen checks are the right next stop.
When the Window Is Right but the Picture Is Wrong
Geometry settings decide the frame; they do not fix what is drawn inside it. A correctly placed, correctly sized window that stays black points at the rendering side — start with our black screen fixes. A window whose game area behaves oddly under the mouse — clicks landing offset from the cursor — is usually a scaling mismatch between the game’s resolution and the window size, and is covered in our mouse problems guide. And the full map of which settings live where is in the DxWnd settings guide. As ever: adjust one value, test, then save the profile with File > Save so the placement you fought for is the placement you keep.