I have an Inspiron 8200 1.60GHz Nvidia GeForce4 440 graphic card 512MB memory 30GB HDD 15' screen I was having a problem where the laptop would only power on to the Dell blue logo screen and then it would freeze. I tried everything before finally doing a clean reformat install with WinXP Pro. I do not have the original "drivers and utilities cd" so there are no drivers installed. I have tried downloading drivers from Dell and Nvidia but none solve the problem I'm having: I can't set the resolution to anything but "1600x1200" nor can I get rid of "multiple monitors" in the "settings' dialog box. If I try to change the resolution, it just makes the actual screen smaller, meaning there's more black around the edges of the screen, but everything that it's actually displaying is still the same size, and I'm actually trying to make everything show bigger anyway, not smaller. Everything on this computer is displayed smaller or more "compacted" than it normally is on every other computer I've ever used before. I'm trying to set the resolution to 800x600. Also the touch pad doesn't work and I think this maybe because of the multiple monitors. I've tried everything the help file suggests. I also can't get Nvidia's desktop manager to install, I think this is part of the problem. Everything else works fine.

Yo need to get ALL of the drivers and only get them from the Dell site.

Yes, get your drivers from Dell. They will have been tweaked to work with the Dell hardware. LCD monitors have native resolution at which the monitors works best. This is because they have a fixed pixel size unlike CRT monitors where the pixel size is infinitely variable. What you describe will often happen when you try and display at a lower resolution than the monitor is designed for. Some drivers will interpolate the pixels in order to fill the screen, but then you get a fuzy image. I have never seen this will Dell drivers. Don't worry about the multiple monitor settings. This is a facility that you can ignore. It allows you laptop to display on both the inbuilt monitor and an external monitor at the same time. The touch pad problem should be solved when you get the correct drivers from Dell. Stuart

Yes I have tried all the drivers from Dell but none fix the problem. I have besides my Inspiron 8200: Inspiron 8600 Inspiron 1200 Lattitude cpx Dimension 9200 (desktop) with 24" LCD These four are all set to 800x600 and all look great. The problem with the multiple monitors setting is I can't set it to the default monitor. if I set the resolution to anything other than 1600x1200 the screen just resizes to 3"x3" with the black border. I bought this laptop for a very low price because it would not post up, it would only power on to a 3"x3" Dell logo screen with the same black border I'm getting now when I change the resolution. I fixed the power on problem by doing a clean install.

1600x1200 is the native resolution for this model

Do you mean it's not possible to set the resolution to 800x600? or do you mean 1600x1200 is just the native resolution? I prefer 800x600 On all my other computers I'm able to set the resolutin to whatever I want, it's only this 8200 that won't allow different resolutions.

you could check the dell troubleshooting forums...