Display Size Became Smaller

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

"Chris" <teddymaflu_nospam@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
news:421b2ee8$0$13392$626a14ce@news.free.fr...
> Hello,
>
> This morning I switched on my laptop and noticed that the display area
> was smaller. It now occupies the center of the screen and there is a
> black area surrounding it.
>
> I used to work with a resolution of 1280 x 1024 occupying the full
> screen area. But now I have to set the resolution to 1600 x 1200 so that
> the display area covers the whole screen.
>
> I did not change anything to my display settings yesterday. Do you
> understand why is that?
> Thank you in advance for your help.
>
> Cheers
>
> Chris

You didn't mention which model of laptop you are using, so I can't give
specific steps, but basically what has happened is the function to expand
the video to fill the screen has been turned off. It sounds like the native
resolution of your screen is 1600 x 1200. If you were running at 1280 x
1024 before, then the computer must have been compensating. Since the
ratios are not the same (1.333 native compared to 1.25 for the 1280 x 1024)
I imagine the display must have been a bit "off" since the pixels would not
have been expanded equally.

Anyhow, there are two possible fixes. You can go into the BIOS setup screen
when your computer boots and look for the words "compensation", "scaling" or
"expansion" under video options and turn it ON. If you don't want to go
into the BIOS, go into the Windows Control Panel option for Display (or
right click on your desktop and select Properties) and go into the advanced
options. Go through the options on the tabs and look for the same words I
mentioned above.

As to how the option got turned off... if you didn't change something, then
someone or some program was badly behaved.

I installed Logmein and Windows 7 and Windows XP (Dual boot) in my old Thinkpad X31 laptop. I had the same problem. There were only 2 display sized 800 by 600 and 1024 by 768. I think logmein screwed up my display for 800 by 600 making it shrink smaller to center screen with display not expanding to 12 inch (My laptop monitor size is 12inch).

Tried changing display through Windows Properties Display , dint work, but went to BIOS and after turning on HIV expansion inside Display, its back to normal.

New version of logmein is sick and useless (March 2010) and disconnects me every 5 to 10 minutes off.

I had installed Vista / Linux / XP (Tri boot) and Windows 7 / 5 types of Linux (6 operating systems at a time - www.pendrivelinux.com) earlier. Never had those problems then.

Thanks for the solution though...

Cheers !
Dan