How do I fix a shrunken screen?

[reddingstacey]

I emailed this to Dell. They emailed me back saying essentially that this was not there problem.

"I was playing a computer game and wanted to change the volume. Since the game takes up the entirety of the monitor and I have to adjust the volume on the desktop I hit the button in the upper right hand corner that takes you immeadiatly to the desk top. I adjusted the volume. Afterwords my game only took up 3/4 of the monitor with the rest blacked out and my mouse unable to extend into the black areas. This affects all my games, but not internet or MS office.

I tried rebooting several times.

I called the dell help line and tried:
start-all programs-accesories-system tools-system restore

I still have this problem"

It is a dell laptop.

I was playing EU II when this happened and it now affects all my games. Has this happened to anyone else or does anybody else at least know what to do?

Thanks.

By the way I have had problems with my first and last Dell computer since a repeatedly messed up delivery to frequant crashes.

 

[jpd]

The game probably runs in a resolution different from your native LCD pixel resolution (and, most likely, your desktop resolution). When you switch back and forth between different resolutions, both the video hardware and your display have to adjust.

Well, for LCD displays you have essentially two modes for adjusting, when the requested resolution doesn't match the LCD pixel matrix. Either the image is scaled (with some sort of algoritm to calculate the color values of interim pixels, which have to be filled up), or the display stays at 1 on 1 pixel, and then you end up with a black border.

It's probably a setting in your display driver, notebook BIOS or vendor specific notebook support software that controls which of the two modes is used to handle the resolution mismatch between the games and your LCD pixel matrix. Right now it sounds like the 1 on 1 mode is active, thus giving a black border for those pixels outside the resolution the game is running at.

Mind you, your display isn't broken, and you still see every pixel generated by the game. In many ways, this mode is even preferrable on LCD displays, as it avoids the creation of filler pixels, and thus image blurring.

The best solution would be to select your native pixel matrix resolution as the game's resolution as well. That way, your entire LCD display gets used again, and you still have 1 on 1, and thus no distortion.

Jan Peter

 

[jdrou]

On my Dell (Inspiron 8200) pressing Fn-F7 [labelled Font] switches to/from fullscreen mode when running below the native resolution. This stays set even through a reboot. (I can't run EU2/HoI at native since native is 1600x1200).

 

[Castellon]

Interesting, I don't have a laptop so thanks for helping him with this issue guys.