[fryguy8585]

hey guys, i just reformatted my hardrive, wanted to start over from scratch. everything's going well so far, but my screen resolution, i don't know how to explain it, just looks odd. i have a widescreen laptop, and everything sort of looks stretched. when i try to play with the resolution settings , i only have two options, 800x600 or 1024x768. i'm not sure if this has anything to do with things looking blurry and stretched, or if it's a driver issue. hope you can help me out.
thanks for your time.

 

[cwwozniak]

Sounds like you do not have the correct drivers installed. 800x600 and 1024x768 are not wide screen resolutions. They would look right on a typical non wide screen display and horizontally stretched on a wide screen display. Do you know the native resolution of the display in the laptop? Did the laptop come with any kind of recovery CDs or a recovery partition on the hard drive?

 

[fryguy8585]

no, i'm not sure what the original resolution is supposed to be. i have a dell, and it came with the DellResource CD, which has drivers on it, do you know which one i should be installing?

 

[cwwozniak]

i have a dell, and it came with the DellResource CD, which has drivers on it, do you know which one i should be installing?

You may be lucky and the Resource CD may be configured to auto-run and automatically detect and install the right drivers for you. Are there any instructions printed on top of the Cd itself.

Dell made lots of different laptops. Might be kinda difficult for anyone here to suggest a specific display driver without knowing the exact Dell model name and model number of the laptop.

 

[schusterjo]

Click on START, click on CONTROL PANEL.
Click on Performance and Maintenance.
Click on System.
Click on the Hardware tab.
Click the DEVICE MANAGER button.
Once you have Device Manager open, Look for yellow, anything with yellow need a driver.

Find the "display" and update that driver this is your resolution/graphics card driver.

Or you can visit your laptops manufacturers web site and download all the latest drivers there.

Far as your resolution right click on desktop, select properties, select setting, increase the bar, select "apply" it will go blank then show you what it is going to look like. if you like it click okay if not then click no and increase the bar further.

 

[fryguy8585]

in response to cwwozniak's post, when i put in the dell resource cd, it seems that there are check marks next to drivers that are already installed. however, there are no checkmarks next to any of the available video drivers (assuming that these are the drivers i'm supposed to be looking for.) if i try to install any of them, it says that the software to install them cannot be found. you said you needed the model number, its a Dell Inspiron E1705 if that helps.

in response to schusterjo's post, once i enter device manager, there is no "display" section. all of the drivers seem to be installed except for the ones under the heading "other devices." the drivers listed are the same ones that do not have checkmarks and cannnot be installed from the resource cd.

 

[cwwozniak]

its a Dell Inspiron E1705 if that helps.

It is a very good start. Here is the driver download page on the Dell web site ...

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...s=gen&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9400&os=WW1&osl=EN#

They list a multiple video controllers and you may need to further identify your particular computer.

If you click on "More Details" in the "Identify Your Hardware - Discover what is in your Computer" section near the bottom of the page, you should be able to enter the laptop's unique service tag number to figure out exactly what is in your unit.

BTW, I found these pixel resolution specs on another web site:
Screen: 17.0" UXGA TrueLife (1900 x 1200 pixel resolution glossy screen)

 

[fryguy8585]

yea, i used the site you gave me and installed one of the drivers and now everythings back to normal, thanks a lot. for future reference if u guys ever need it, the resolution is 1440x900

 

[cwwozniak]

yea, i used the site you gave me and installed one of the drivers and now everythings back to normal, thanks a lot.

You are welcome. Glad to hear that we could help you out. :up: