electrifried

I bought a Dell Latitude laptop on ebay with the idea of my kids being able to do their homework without cutting into my time reading on here. The thing seems to work fine except the visible part of the screen is about half the size I think it should be. The op system is win 98. We have tried the right click, going to settings and then trying to move the pixel bar but no luck. (This is the high schooler doing this, I feel lucky to find the on button.)

Thanks in advance

Mark

TomW

Sounds to me the driver might not be the proper one for the notebook. Right click on the desktop and select Properties, then go to the settings tab. What are the settings there?

electrifried

Top line
Laptop display area (1024x768) on standard PCI graphics adapter (VGA)

Then
Colors 16colors

Then at the bar which is to the far left 640x480


I hope this answers the question as the high schooler went to bed.

Thanks
Mark

Captain

sound like you dont have any video driver installed. Goto Dells website and try to find a graphics driver for your notebook. start here http://support.dell.com/support/down...=19&l=en&s=dhs if you give me your model like laditude 2400 or wahtever I might be able to find it for you. let us know how you make out

electrifried

From the back?
Dell Latitude CPi D300 XT

If you need more, I will need more instruction to find it

I know I love this site for a reason, You guys are great!!!!

Thanks
Mark

Captain

http://support.dell.com/support/down...6&fileid=19997

try that. its for a dell "latitude cpi" they didnt list a d300 only a 400 so I just went with generic cpi. download, install. reboot. then do the right click, properties, set "colors" to a hell of alot more then 16colors. it should be at least 20 some bit or 32bit witch is like 16.4million colors. then change your resoulation to 800x600 or 1024x768 or something fun.

electrifried

I am looking to find my old driver and pcm??? card that I used to have when I used a laptop to surf the net via DSL. I did not have any plans to allow this laptop to be hooked to the net. A hardnosed parents way of censorship...

Thanks again

Captain

its only 232k or something. put it on a floppy, zip disk, usb flash drive or something

electrifried

How do you download it and not land it on the computer you are connected with? (put it to a disk or flash) I would hate to put that driver on this computer and mess it up.

Thanks again.

Captain

when you click "download now" you should get apop up box with "save as" "run" "cancel" if you select "save as" you can save it to disk, flash or your local machine (desk top hard drive wahtever) then move it around as you see fit. via cut and paste or copy and paste to the appropriate location

electrifried

This makes no sense to me BUT the wife is nodding her head as she can do that, and now telling me to get out of the way.........

THANKS!!!!

Mark

Captain

haha. Well thats ok. We cant all do everything. Let me know if it works or if you have any more questions.

DuaneWKKC

everyone here has missed another 'possible' cause. I have not been on that model so I do not know what the bios is like, however there is a setting in the bios on 'some' that will center the screen when running at lower than native resolution for the monitor, If you plug into your desktop monitor (CRT) does it do the same thing? If it is a recent model, last couple of years, it really should be 1024x 768 OR HIGHER native resolution. The reason this bios setting is an option is if you run 800 x 600 on a native 1024x768 LCD screen, it will look fuzzy because of the pixel counts ( cant use 1 1/2 pixles, have to use 2 ).

Good luck with your 'Smell'

DuaneW.

1-2-3

Go to the Dell website and enter the serial number of the laptop. They call it the express service code too. That will bring up all the correct drivers you need for the entire system. service dot dell dot com

Captain

I know about the centering screen thing but if you look at near the top of the post where he says its 16 colors and a standard pci graphics adapter. He needs to get a video driver first befor he goes looking around for more trouble. I'm guessing since he bought it used someone just did afresh install of the OS and thats it.