I am installing an old laptop (XP Pro) for a friend's child with mid-90's educational software and have run into something that is slowly driving me to distraction. A program I want to use, Dangerous Creatures from Microsoft, requires a lower screen resolution to run. No matter what I try I can't automate this. Compatibility mode doesn't work, Start/Wait in a batch file doesn't work, and using a command line program from a vbs script doesn't work. In all cases the resolution switches but then immediately switches back as soon as the program loads. The only way I can prevent this is to insert a Pause command in a batch file, but this then requires a keypress to continue.

Surely it must be possible to automate this? Other old programs I have installed do work without problem. Only with this one do I have this issue. I assume it has something to do with multitasking and the launcher program remaining active only briefly but I don't really understand what is going on here. Any suggestions would be warmly welcomed.