Sdl wihtout a window

hi,

can i use sdl without opening a window?

i started working with sdl yesterday. first project i want to use it for: i
have written a soundvisualizer which has problems switching into fullscreen mode
on some computers. sdl seems to be very good (not only) at this, therefore in
the first step i want to (ab)use to change the screenmode.

before i change the whole application to sdl i tried to use sdl only for
fullscreen mode. i change to fullscreen with

sdl_surface = SDL_SetVideoMode(640, 480, 32, SDL_FULLSCREEN | SDL_ANYFORMAT);

everything works allright, but the only way i found to go back to desktop is

sdl_surface = SDL_SetVideoMode(640, 480, 32, SDL_ANYFORMAT);

now i have an extra (sdl-app)window on my screen. how do i get rid of this
window? more general: can i use the sdl wihtout sdl opening a window?

cheers, timo