I've done a lot of posting and typing on other forums, so I'm gonna keep this short and simple.

I have a 20" widescreen monitor, alright when games support widescreen resolution, however some of the older games do not support widescreen, and therefore it just stretches the screen.

Ewwwww.

Games like Command and Conquer, Warcraft III, etc...

So is there a program that'll either MAKE it support widescreen, or just center the game with the correct aspect ratio and then pop a coupla black bars on either side rather than stretch the game?

PS
Useful widescreen information can be found here.

That's probably going to be driver based or just controlled by the game itself but you might try D3DWindower if you don't mind Windowed mode.

hows about you dont run the game in fullscreen?

Honestly, why would you say that...
You should start giving all your advice like this.

'I need to get to 80 fishing'
'Hows about you stop fishing'

Games don't always have the option to run it Windowed.

Only difference is, he is actually making a valid point. Windowed then scale to fit, it's not as if it's going to ruin the game or anything.

Windowed would work, but again - not all games support windows, as Drerven said.

And as for Drerven's program, apparently you can get VAC-banned for using it in Steam, and knowing my sometimes forgetfulness of background programs I may forget its on. Dont wanna take the risk.

Yea FFXI Online can ban for that too. I just don't mention it to anybody and I never have a problem. I don't know is Steam has a way to trace that or not though.

It probably does if you get a VAC ban, because as far as i'm concerned those only happen when VAC detects something, it's fully automatic.

It depends on the game. The majority of games house their 'options' menu in a .ini/.txt or otherwise openable file somewhere in the games directory.

When you open that folder more often then not you will see a "Resolution = xxxx X xxxx"

You can actually change that too be whatever you want, and most of the time it will render the game in that resolution properly. (Sometimes you can also find options that the developers decided NOT to include in the options menu here, such as games that FORCE 4x AA)

Since the items in that ini file are meant to be changed and are not meant to match a given "Known good" file, i don't see much likelihood of being VAC banned.

Normally I find slightly different solutions for each game, when i have to handle older games windscreen/window'd mode resolutions I typically handle them on a case by case basis since all of them are developed slightly differently. Some simply will not work at all.

http://warcraft.freakygaming.com/tutorials...widescreen.html

I don't care if you think VAC may or may not find out, its not worth risking all the games I've paid good money for. However, my brother did what Mangr0v3 just posted where you go into the registry and tell it what resolution to make it, and it does it.

However, I still have a problem with cinematics. I had the game "installed" on an old laptop. When I went in to copy, it got stuck on one file, so I gave up. A few months later when I tried again, Avira detected a Trojan on one of the files, so I quarantined it. With that done, the game was happy to copy and it runs fine, however none of the cinematics play. I get sound, and stupid subtitles right in the middle of the screen, but no video. When I say cinematic I mean the high detail movies that start and end campaigns - not the in-game cutscenes. Those work fine.

Anyways, resolution problem is fixed. If anybody knows how to fix cinematics without watching them on YouTube, please help me. Otherwise thanks for all your help!