Noah_Vaile 0 Report post Posted April 29, 2007 I have a DELL Inspiron 8000, 40G HD and 512 RAM. O/S Windows Me. About a year ago I wiped it. Re-installed Win Me and have been using it just for games, and simple ones at that- Panzer General II and Steel Panthers variants (SPWW2, SPWAW). It has no internet capability and I have no plans for it to go browsing. The other day the power went out, my battery was flat, and the machine shut down. When I was able to bring it back the screen area had shrunk. Everything, Icons, letters and the drop down/pop up windows are all shrunk. In addition the games windows are shrunk to about 1/5 the screen area, very sharp and nicely centered but barely visible due their small size. I can only get the background to fill the screen by going to 1200x1600 resolution. Of course that doesn't help my icons and letters any. Even using large icons and messing with the accessibility as soon as I try a game it comes up teensy. I can't believe that there isn't some simple (as if anything in Windows is simple) setting cure I can use to fix this. DELL seems to think it is a hardware problem, disc damage. We ran a diagnostic and it showed a number of fails before it went black. I have reinstalled everything at least twice but don't want to jump for a $150.oo or so new HD if I can get out of this mess some other way. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bruceleeon 0 Report post Posted April 29, 2007 Hard drive errors don't usually cause video issues. Even so, if you have HDD errors don't think you have to spend 150 on a hard drive. Newegg and Tiger have 250GB hard drives for 59.00. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
camaroguy1998 0 Report post Posted April 30, 2007 Try going down in resolution instead of up! Your Laptop is a few yrs old and was intended to run a lower res. like 1024x768(not an absolute) as a normal res. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bruceleeon 0 Report post Posted April 30, 2007 OH.. its a lappy... even still, you can get a 160 for 89. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Noah_Vaile 0 Report post Posted April 30, 2007 (edited) At the lower resolutions the size of the window just shrinks, leaving a larger and larger black frame around the window. At the lowest resolution it is sort of a large postage stamp and any window that I open is unreadable. So I am getting a new HD. I went back into Dell chat this morning and got the same answer. The faulty HD is why the reloads have all been unsuccessful. I am sure because I reloaded Me five times and the drivers and utilities disc three times. All to the same shrunken screen result. It also wouldn't allow me into/work in safe mode. It could get into postage stamp safe but the cursor would freeze, ctrl-alt-del wouldn't work and I would eventually just do a manual (press power button) shut down. I must have shut down and restarted fifty or more times in less than 24 hours. This has been very frustrating for me and it really ruined our Sunday. As it turns out my friendly neighborhood computer fix-it shoppe has been swamped with individuals and businesses whose have computer problems resulting from Saturday's surging power. My Mac is unaffected. I want to thank you all for your help, offers, suggestions and interest. Edited April 30, 2007 by Noah_Vaile Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites