Open A Program Fully Maximized or Minimized

Tagged: Windows

This recipe explains how to open a program full maximized and should work with all flavors of windows including 95/98/NT/2K/XP.

Several of my shareware programs I use open into a little bittie window when they open. Here’s how to force it to open maximized.

Command Line Method:

The secret is to preface your command with:
START /MAX

For example, running this from your command line will open notepad maximized:
START /MAX notepad.exe

To have it opened but minimized automatically, preface with:
START /MIN

Shortcut Method:

With this method you just create a shortcut to the program in which you are interested. Then you just change the properties of the shortcut to make it run maximized or minimized. Here’s how to do it for notepad for example.

1. Right-click on a blank area of your desktop
2. Select New and then Shortcut
3. Browse for the program. In this case since notepad is in our path, you can just type in notepad.exe
4. Name the shortcut
5. Click Finish
6. Right-click on your newly created shortcut
7. Select Properties
8. Under Run you can select Minimized, Maximized, or Normal Window
9. Click OK

By editing any shortcut, you can force the program to come up either minimized or maximized.