I just powered up this old laptop to see if it was good. The only problem I noticed is that when Windows is up there is about 1.5" of black space around the screen.

I would like Windows to fill the entire screen (naturally) but don't recall a way of stretching the screen image to fit to the edges of the monitor like I used to do on older CRT monitors.

Is there a setting I'm not thinking of (resolution is 800x600 btw) or is the LCD on this notebook broken in an odd way?

Thanks,

Po

This is normal behaviour for an LCD monitor. LCD monitors have a native resolution that it should be set at, in this case it looks as if it should be 1024x768. Smaller resolutions and you get the effect seen.

This is because the pixel size in LCD monitors is a fixed size where on CRT monitors they are infinitely variable which allows the screen to be filled at any resolution. With an LCD to fill the screen at any other resolution than the native resolution there needs to be a method of pixel interpolation which can lead to a loss of quality. Not all graphics drivers will do this interpolation.

The solution is to go into the graphics card set the resolution to the next one up or until the screen is filled.

Stuart

There may also be a setting in BIOS!

Do you have the graphics drivers installed for the intergated chip? Your problem may be due to Windows using a generic driver.

Ugghh - I sent a reply that didn't post. That stinks.

Anyway your responses prompted me to look a little more closely at the laptop. Evidently I had been tricking myself.

I was changing the resolution and then setting the color depth to its highest setting (24bit).

On this PC 24 bit color appears to be tied to the 800x600 resolution and 16 bit color is tied to the 1024x768 resolution.

So I guess I was chasing my tail. I've never seen the Colors setting directly associated with a resolution but I've never heard of this graphics card (or chip) either.

Thanks for the replies and the help.

Po

The reason for that is due to the memory available. If you can dedicate more RAM to the video you may be able to run full color. IMO 16 bit and 32 bit are just about comparable.

>> I've never seen the Colors setting directly associated with a resolution <<

In the early days of computer when 1MBs of video memory was a lot it was common to have the numbers of colours tied to the resolution. The reason for that is that the higher the resolution and the greater to colour depth then more memory is needed to store the information.

1024x768 at 24 bits requires at least 4Mbs of video memory. It looks as if you only have 2MBs of memory. There may be a way of increasing the amount of RAM allocated to video memory in the BIOS. These days where 128MBs of video memory is common, the problem hardly arises.

http://www.scantips.com/basics11.html

Stuart