Black borders ?! help!

[IceWilly]

My fathers work laptop has a wierd problem. It has black borders around the edge of the monitor on all but the largest resolution... 1400 x 1050...

he used to use it at 800 x 600, but he leant it to someone and got it back like this... I reinstalled new Nvidia drivers... geforce 2 go... no luck. Also, it boots up using the entire screen, and only when it gets to the login screen do the borders show up on smaller resolutions? any ideas. i have scoured the internet with no luck, and the search function on this site never turns up anything anymore....
thanks a bunch

[syberspy9]

ask the guy he lent it to lol

i have no clue how to adjust a lapto screen sorry and no one but me and like 4 others look in this section so dont count on help here

[ashenfang]

ah, the famous black border syndrome. The reason you are getting black borders around the picture at everything other than that resolution is because the other resolutions are not the "native" resolution of that LCD scree. For instance, a 14" lappy screen usually has a native resolution of 1024x768, however, if you try to run something in 800x600 the picture is "scaled" down to keep the ratio intact.

There really isn't a way to fix this, unless the computer/vid card has a stretch feature. This will make it fit the screen, but at the sacrifice of quality. Check under you display properties, and look for something you can check mark, like, "stretch to fit window"

Hope that helps.

[travioli]

Try checking in the bios. On my laptop there is an option to have a scaled or strechtched screen. With this feature off, black boarders if its not the native res, with it on, full screens with lower quality without black bars.

[IceWilly]

i checked the bios the first time through, was section is it in so i know where to look next time.

[travioli]

I have a Sony with a Pheonix bios and its in the advanced section and its called "LCD Screen Expansion". Hope that helps.