Resolution problem

[Paula Brkich]

Hi, I'm not technically savvy and I have a question that will probably be very simple for many of you to answer.

When my dad's computer was hooked up, the screen displayed a very wide view, and the print was very tiny. He has Windows XP. I clicked into Control Panel, Resolution and observed a sliding scale I could choose. I slid it all the way to the left, and inadvertently choose to keep it that way. Now the screen is so huge, I can't view it in its entirety, and I can't access that same sliding scale to change it back.

After you finish laughing, can you tell me what to do about this? I apologize in advance for the stupidity of this question, and ask for your mercy and your help.

Thanks.

 

[Tmagic650]

Hey Paula,
I can say that you haven't been the first person to have this trouble. There are a couple of things to try...

First:

Boot into "Safe Mode" by pressing F8 while the system is booting before "Windows" is displayed. Once you are at the "Safe Mode" desktop, right click on an unused section, and select "Settings". You should be able to modify the settings enough to resize the screen to a more usable size.

Another thing:

If you can go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, select System Restore, and select a day before you changed the resolution, or for that matter, a day where your father's system was displaying correctly and just reboot the system

 

[Necrosis]

I would just say don't slide the bar all the way to the right. If you have a pretty new commputer the resolution all the way to the right would be 800x600 in most cases. this means that the entire screen will seem bigger because anything on your screen will be bigger. The easiest thing I can think of is just play around with the resolution until you find the right one. When I bought this computer I kept my old emachines monitor and the resolution doesn't fit perfectly because emachines probably has it's own resolutions to customize the desktops (maybe). So i kept playing around with it and now I'm at 1024x768. it doesn't fit the whole screen but its good.

 

[Paula Brkich]

Resolution Problems

Thanks, T. I tried everything you mentioned, no luck. I could access the sliding bar, but it wouldn't stay where I put it even if I clicked Apply and Ok.

I read some other threads about monitors, and I don't know if this is the original monitor to this computer or not. My dad has had a stroke and doesn't remember, and my sister moved the computer to my house with this monitor. She's on an airplane now, or I would call her.

The problem that caused me to fool with the sliding scale in the first place was the fact that the screen displayed so wide and the print was so tiny. This is a Sony Vaio, with a Sony monitor, the big kind, and runs XP Professional. Reading the parts in the troubleshooter about checking to see if I have the right monitor were extremely confusing.

Does this sound like I need to get a real person into my house to fix this?

 

[Tmagic650]

Ok Paula,
sounds like you might need some XP drivers for that Sony monitor. If you can, go to Sony.com and see what you can find for the model you have. One other thing:

Try changing the display adapter's refresh to something around 72 Hertz. You can find this under Display Properties, Settings, Advanced, List All Modes...