It's not dosbox that shows this warning, but some ati tool.
Check the control panel stuff or ati docs on how to disable that, and see if
the image quality of fullscreen is fine.

ATI is the manufacturer of my graphics card (Radeon Xpress 1150). I went through the device manager, and troubleshooter, but they didn't even have an option for my question. Also, it doesn't do this for any other application, just dosbox, so it is some sort of compatibility thing. Other than that, I don't really even know how to get started fixing it. I'm hoping someone else who's had this problem before posts before I spend 6 hours trying to figure out how to disable a stupid little pop-up window.

Thanks for you reply, btw.

ATI usually likes to stick things in your startup or as a service. They can be disabled with autoruns. (and easily re-enabled if needed)

Laptops are well known for installing a lot of crap at startup (mostly useless) too. I can assure this by looking at your system tray. One friend of mine did a format/fresh install on his new bought ACER Laptop, installed just what he needs and now his system is running a lot faster and smoother.

That message can also be from Windows itself. It cares about these things (sometimes).

Use fullresolution=1280x800 and output=<something other than surface>

`Moe`: Thanks, that did it! Question: right now I just have it set as overlay, does it matter what it's set to? (other than surface, which seems to have been causing the problem)

You're my hero.

Surface is the simplest output mode of all.

I've been told that on windows, overlay is good for ati cards, whlie opengl is good for nvidia. It's mainly a matter of speed, so see which one works best for you