Hello gents,

I'm having issues with my laptop running some programs...specifically games. This doesn't seem to affect anything else that I can see. When I start a game, it runs in a small box in the center of the screen (not a Windows box.) The rest of the screen remains black. The game itself runs fine, only is a small box maybe 1/5 the size of the screen. It didn't start doing this until very recently and I know I didn't change any settings...Any help would be appreciated. Thanx in advance.

Nobody?  Wow, I should never start a thread ever!

Many games aren't designed for use on laptops. What game is it?

You are running the game at a different resolution from your desktop.

Laptops can't resize lower resolution displays to fill the screen the way a CRT display does.

Run the game at a higher resolution.

LOL, 23 seconds too late.

The problem is that the game is set to run at a resolution much lower than your current desktop settings.

Your LCD is not currently set to expand the lower resolutions to fill the screen.  (It may not have this option)


Increase the resolution at which your game runs.

It would help if you started by saying what you have under the hood of that laptop.

Sorry this is a Dell XPS laptop, their top of the line multimedia laptop.

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with Hyper-Threading Technology at 3.40 GHz

On-die 512 KB cache (L2)

32 KB internal cache (L1)

800MHz front side BUS

Intel® 865PE Chipset

512 MB of 400MHz DDR Dual Channel SDRAM standard,

IEEE 1394 integrated port (1394 cable and software sold separately)

4-USB 2.0 (Universal Serial Bus) compliant 4-pin connectors

Digital Video Interface (DVI)

Serial infrared communications port (lrDA-1.1 compliant)

Video: 15-pin monitor connector

S-Video: 7-pin mini-DIN connector

Audio jacks: Stereo headphones/speakers miniconnector (same as line-out), microphone miniconnector

Any game I put in plays in a small black box in the center of the screen.  It only recently started doing this. (Halo, Command and Conquer Generals, Ground Control...)

Quoted: LOL, 23 seconds too late. The problem is that the game is set to run at a resolution much lower than your current desktop settings. Your LCD is not currently set to expand the lower resolutions to fill the screen.  (It may not have this option) Increase the resolution at which your game runs.

Also:
Are you using onboard/basic video or an aftermarket video card (i.e. ATI/nVidia)?
Does your laptop have a Video Expansion option (most likely in BIOS)? Is it enabled?