Inspiron 1100 display resizing problem

[Zap]

The 14.1" LCD display on my Inspiron 1100 is native 1024x768. If any lower resolution is selected, the picture does not stretch to fill the screen. There is an option in the drivers to stretch the picture using CTRL-ALT-F11 but it just makes the screen blink, then return to the original. I was under the (perhaps wrong) impression that all modern notebooks can automatically stretch the picture to fill the whole screen no matter what resolution is selected. Am I stuck with this? Is there a fix for this?

FYI, no problems in Windows, but I'd like to play some games on it. For instance, Starcraft is 640x480 and the resulting picture size is reminiscent of the tiny screens on the Mac SE, with a big black border around it.

 

[bastula]

Did you try the Function key + F7? It should resize your display to the native screen size. Works on my Inspiron 8200 - not sure if they took out that function in the new generation Dells. Give that a shot - hope it works.

 

[Zap]

Thank you for the suggestion but Fn+F7 doesn't do anything on my 1100. If I go to Display Properties, Settings, Advanced, Intel(R) Extreme Graphics, Graphics Properties, Hot Keys... there's a hot key set for "Enable/Disable Panel Fitting" <CTRL><ALT>F11. Doing that just makes the screen blink once. The <CTRL><ALT>F12 hot key for invoking graphics properties does work.

 

[Jeff7]

Interesting - I have a Compaq Presario 1700 that is like this; the key combination is Fn+F3. The screen blinks, but remains at the unstretched screen. Odd.

 

[bastula]

I found this link over at the Dell Forums: http://support.dell.com/us/en/kb/document.asp?DN=1077317

In the document it mentions this note:

NOTE: The Inspiron 1100 does not have the ability to "stretch" the image to fill the screen. However, image stretching will happen on an external monitor because monitors do not use set pixels for displaying an image.

Sorry to bring you that bad news. :frown: I don't know if there is another solution for you.

 

[Zap]

Thank you for that link, bastula. Yeah, bad news, but I guess I can just run everything that supports it at 1024x768. I'll probably still keep the thing since I got a killer deal for it. $747 with free shipping for P4 2.0, 128MB, 30GB, CDRW/DVD, additional battery. I supposed that if I wanted more features, such as ability to stretch the screen, I could have purchased a more expensive notebook.

Now, though the screen doesn't support it I wonder if the drivers eventually will, since it has a hot key for it. I tried getting newest drivers from Intel's site, but it killed Windows (did a restore point right before, whew!).