Laptop Screen

I hope this is in the right forum.
My co-worker has a laptop; Dell Inspiron B130, Windows XP.
The graphics on her screen do not take up the whole monitor.
On both the left and right hand sides there is a 1” margin where it is just black.
Why won’t the graphics show on this portion of the screen?
How do I fix this?

 

On laptops, changing the setting for the screen resolution can often fix this problem.

 

Only the graphics?
Are you talking about a specific program such as ACDsee which puts black bars around the sides /top to display a graphic in its correct aspect ratio.?

 

My laptop does the same thing, though its a Toshiba. It has been said but incase you dont know how to change the resolution settings it's easy..
Right click on your desktop, select properties, then settings. There you will see res settings. Slide the bar up to at least 1024 x 768 or higher depending on preference, or allowed.
This will fix your problem. Right now the settings are probably at 640 x .
Have fun with full screen

 

Could be the aspect ration 4:3 vs 16:9 or whatever they are.

 

Wouldn't that be resolution, as already mentioned?

 

Other things that can do this:

Incorrectly installed video drivers.
Switch the screen mode from to CRT from laptop LCD and back. I've seen this as an issue with Dells too.

 

Of course not.

Say you were displaying a graphic shot at 800 x 600 on a 4:3 screen set to 1024 x 768.

At 1:1 You would see black bars at both sides, top and bottom. If you scaled (stretched) the graphic it would just fit the screen because the aspect ratio is the same as for the screen.

However I think the B130 is widescreen, not exactly 16:9 but near enough, so it is impossible to fill that screen with an 800 x 600 or any other 4:3 graphic, without either tiling or sideways distortion.

 

Exacltly.

THe wallpaper, picture etc. may be 800x600 in the example, but when you set your system resolution, you will get a full screen. It may be stetched and distorted, or tiled, or centered, in which case, yes, there would be black bars. However---black bars that are still part of the desktop and usable, which is not what the poster is indicating (imo).

I guess some clarification is in order.