I've tried and tried to find this solution but have had to resort to
this to find a fix.

I'm trying to play Maple Story (www.mapleglobal.com - 100% free) in
Windowed mode so that I can avoid having to alt-tab to and from the
game as I play to answer MSN, etc.

I've tried a couple of the methods found online but I am experiencing
difficulties with both of the methods I've found.  To the researcher,
there are two methods that you'll find right away, 1) placing a 3rd
party .dll in the folder.. this only works for the european or korean
version of the game.. I'm playing the American version available from
www.mapleglobal.com and 2) Using a 3rd party program called 3d
analyzer which has a "force windowed mode" checkbox and it seems
really straight forward to use but I get an error as soon as I try to
execute MapleStory.exe with the software.  It says "Cannot copy
c:\MapleStory\3danalyzer\hook_3DA.dll to c:\MapleStory\hook_3DA.dll"
and just halts there.

Thanks in advance!!

Did you try copying the file c:\MapleStory\3danalyzer\hook_3DA.dll to
c:\MapleStory\hook_3Da.dll manually?

Also did you select the maple story executable when you ran 3danalyzer?

Hi, yes I tried both of these things.

I've read that the hook_3DA does not work for MapleGlobal but only
some other revisions of the game (there are quite a few for other
continents/contries)

The 3D Analyser thing is what really is getting to me since I know it
should be working. I have a feeling maybe my graphics card is not
compatible or something.. maybe the drivers?

Saphire Radeon 9800 256MB

Basically, go to this website:
http://www.mpcdownloads.com/forums/downloads/Maple-Story/Maple-Story-Windowed-Mode/5796.html

Download the program, it works for MapleGlobal (I've tested it today),
just make sure you have WinRAR, (just download the trial) to extract
the file.

Apparently, window mode is a hack, so use it sparingly.