I know I have seen this problem once before, but I am currently seeing it on a dell latitude d600.
During POST and while windows is loading the display is about half its normal size and centered within the viewable area.
It appears this way in any PE environment as well.
But it is full size when the welcome screen appears and normal throughout windows operation.
ANY ideas?
Does it matter except for the sake of knowledge?
Anyway - during POST the CPU uses your Video card BIOS at VGA resolution. During Windows boot, the basic Windows VGA drivers are used unless you inhibit this via a boot.ini switch. After login, your profile resolution using the full video driver functionality is applied.
It may also be that your monitor is forcing a higher resolution during boot (this is unusual in my experience) and so the VGA text appears smaller.
Does that answer your question sufficiently?
That definately helps. It will at very least give me a good start.
This problem has only been happening for about 3 months. It used to be completely fine.
I am not 100% sure, but I would like to rule out video card bios. The person using this laptop is not very computer savvy and I highly doubt that she could have done any bios upgrade on the video card.
I am however wondering if during a windows update a driver was changed and that affected this. Is that a possibility or does the problem have to be at the bios level?
I am positive that it is not a case of being higher resolution. The display is noticably different then what is not being displayed even with a black background. When the background is blue or other color there is no mistake that the video size is only about half and centered.
And no it does not affect the computer, but it gives the appearance that something is wrong which is what is bothering the user.
Thanks for your help
Did the user switch monitors?
Happens with all monitors?
Try an old analog VGA display and see if still happens.
The problem may be 1) resolution or 2) refresh rate
If the user installed a 3rd party program to control the video card, and this program set the default of the card on power-on to something over than say VGA 60 Hz, that could cause the problem, then when windows takes command, the resolution and refresh rate change
This is a laptop. And no 3rd party software to control display.
Thanks
That definately helps. It will at very least give me a good start.
This problem has only been happening for about 3 months. It used to be completely fine.
I am not 100% sure, but I would like to rule out video card bios. The person using this laptop is not very computer savvy and I highly doubt that she could have done any bios upgrade on the video card.
I am however wondering if during a windows update a driver was changed and that affected this. Is that a possibility or does the problem have to be at the bios level?I am positive that it is not a case of being higher resolution. The display is noticably different then what is not being displayed even with a black background. When the background is blue or other color there is no mistake that the video size is only about half and centered.
And no it does not affect the computer, but it gives the appearance that something is wrong which is what is bothering the user.
Thanks for your help
Have a read of the attachment. It explains what happens when.
I know you're asking about why it's changed since 3 months ago but it gives us both time to think about it once more.
The thing to tell the lady of the laptop is that if it doesn't beep when booting and the screen shows something and after logging in the screen's fine, then all's well.
I had a Dell Latitude D620 with this problem and the solution was to go in to the system setup (press F2 during post or F12 and then select from the menu) and under video enable "LCD Expansion". On some models I believe that Fn + F7 or F8 will work as well.
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