Please help: Dell laptop-display stuck in center of screen

[Ed from AZ]

I've had a bit of a fight with my video drivers. I finally figured
out that what I thought was a driver I was reinstalling was just an
update! Got the drivers back onto my Dell Latitude D600 (Win XP sp2),
and the display is working ~almost~ normal.

Except:
-- It seems to be stuck on high resolution (vey small icons) no matter
where I set the resolution.
-- The desktop image is stuck in the center of the screen, with inches
of black space all around.

I thought I saw a "scale image to panel" option in my display options
(right-click on desktop >> settings >> advanced), but I can't find it
any more. (ATI Mobiilty Radeon 9000).

I went into the BIOS setup and enabled the screen enlargement. That
worked great - until Windows fully booted and the desktop shrunk back
to the center!

Can someone suggest anything that might help?

Thanks!
Ed

 

[Elmo]

I've had a bit of a fight with my video drivers. I finally figured
out that what I thought was a driver I was reinstalling was just an
update! Got the drivers back onto my Dell Latitude D600 (Win XP sp2),
and the display is working ~almost~ normal.

Except:
-- It seems to be stuck on high resolution (very small icons) no matter
where I set the resolution.
-- The desktop image is stuck in the center of the screen, with inches
of black space all around.

I thought I saw a "scale image to panel" option in my display options
(right-click on desktop >> settings >> advanced), but I can't find it
any more. (ATI Mobility Radeon 9000).

I went into the BIOS setup and enabled the screen enlargement. That
worked great - until Windows fully booted and the desktop shrunk back
to the center!

Can someone suggest anything that might help?

Thanks!
Ed

Just a thought.. does the Device Manager show a monitor? Maybe you need
to update that driver..

I've also seen some graphics cards that have two screen resolution
slides, one above the other. Matching them to the same resolution makes
the display fill the screen, other combinations would give the results
you're seeing, or require panning if the resolution overfilled the
display. That would be obvious if the right drivers were installed though.

 

[Paul]

I've had a bit of a fight with my video drivers. I finally figured
out that what I thought was a driver I was reinstalling was just an
update! Got the drivers back onto my Dell Latitude D600 (Win XP sp2),
and the display is working ~almost~ normal.

Except:
-- It seems to be stuck on high resolution (vey small icons) no matter
where I set the resolution.
-- The desktop image is stuck in the center of the screen, with inches
of black space all around.

I thought I saw a "scale image to panel" option in my display options
(right-click on desktop >> settings >> advanced), but I can't find it
any more. (ATI Mobiilty Radeon 9000).

I went into the BIOS setup and enabled the screen enlargement. That
worked great - until Windows fully booted and the desktop shrunk back
to the center!

Can someone suggest anything that might help?

Thanks!
Ed

I see a bunch of drivers, of various versions, for the D600.
Did you locate yours, using the Service Tag ? Do you know
for certain, it is the right driver for that machine ? Some
laptops have multiple internal graphics options.

I got the impression, that at least for some drivers, the
main LCD panel in the laptop is not Plug and Play. Which means
pairing the correct driver with the hardware is important,
to get proper behavior. (That is why, I wouldn't necessarily
start at the ATI web site, trying to get a driver for a laptop.)

There was one other case here, where an errant behavior was
actually due to a bad cable inside the laptop. But there is
no reason to be assuming that in this case. It sounds more
like the driver is assuming a different type of LCD panel,
than is actually installed. Trying to "coerce" the graphics
manually, sounds like a good recipe for "hair loss".

Paul

 

[Jose]

I've had a bit of a fight with my video drivers.  I finally figured
out that what I thought was a driver I was reinstalling was just an
update!  Got the drivers back onto my Dell Latitude D600 (Win XP sp2),
and the display is working ~almost~ normal.

Except:
-- It seems to be stuck on high resolution (vey small icons) no matter
where I set the resolution.
-- The desktop image is stuck in the center of the screen, with inches
of black space all around.

I thought I saw a "scale image to panel" option in my display options
(right-click on desktop >> settings >> advanced), but I can't find it
any more.  (ATI Mobiilty Radeon 9000).

I went into the BIOS setup and enabled the screen enlargement.  That
worked great - until Windows fully booted and the desktop shrunk back
to the center!

Can someone suggest anything that might help?

Thanks!
Ed

Take a look at your monitor settings as well. You may need to expand
the vertical and horizontal size of what is the visible area on your
screen to accommodate your driver and Windows settings.