Laptop screen res problem

[Prew]

At a school I work at, I was given a Dell Latitude (PIII). However, it appears to be stuck at 1600x1200 resolution- which makes the print on the screen quite small and difficult to read. When the screen res is decreased, the screen just gets smaller and the font size stays the same (screen becomes a smaller square on the entire monitor.

FYI- this Laptop is identical to three other laptops. Each laptop was recently ghosted with identical software (used the same disk)XP Pro and MS office. However, this is the only laptop with this problem- the other laptops can change res without problems. The video card is a Geforce 2go- and the drivers were reinstalled but did not solve the problem.

Is this a hardware problem or can it be fixed?- the school tech person thought it has to do voltage.

[rios__]

Some laptops are able to run non-native resolutions at the screens native resolution (in this case, UXGA). As a result, if you set a lower resolution, you'll get a smaller square on the screen. Check the bios for a setting that changes this. It's got nothing to do with voltage by the way

[glc]

Look in the bios for something having to do with display stretch.

[Prew]

Doesn't appear to be anything like that in the bios- only video setting is whether or not I want to use the system or docking system video card as the default (it's on default).

I'm surprised that this laptop (must be at least 5 years old) has a default res of 1600x1200 (can't believe that this was the original factory setting) and that the res can be set on 5 different settings- my other three laptops (relatively new ones) only have one or two settings.

[doctorgonzo]

It's definitely not a voltage thing. Did you look at every setting in the BIOS? That's usually where it is hiding; as glc said, it's something like "Display Stretch". Check the BIOS version on that laptop too; you may need to update it.

[Prew]

When the school tech guy told me that he had tried everything and could only attribute the problem to voltage I thought he had at least tried the obvious solutions. But no.

However, you guys knew right away that the problem was just an issue that involved a setting change, and you were right.

All I did was go to display properties- advanced- geforce2 go tab and changed the laptop display property.

(School tech people are not really techs, they are teachers with little if any training. The really sad part is that school systems can't hire real tech like you guys because you have to have a teaching certificate to be a school computer tech (a union thing).

Keep up the good work.

[allannabas]

this is the "black border syndrome" as it's called at the dell forums, use fn+f7 to stretch the screen image to the size of the LCD.