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Win XP, SP2: Screen resolution setting problem

Upchurch

Papa Funkosophy
Upchurch
Joined
May 10, 2002
Messages
34,265
Location
St. Louis, MO
I recieved an email from a friend of mine this morning with a problem and I thought I'd run it by you guys.

The relevent portion:
Listen, I'm having an issue over here. At startup the desktop is at the smallest possible setting. Resolution. It's about four or five inches across and down. I CAN reset the resolution, but it inevitably goes back to the small desktop once you shut down. I even downloaded the big ass Windows XP download and that didn't help. I've looked ◊◊◊◊ up, and nothing. Spybot is mentioning something about BackOrificeB. Which I know isn't good, but looking it up on the forums, it appears that alot of people have been getting this up now after updating Spybot. They think it might be a false positive. I'm defragging as we speak. But aside from all of that, I am at a loss. There is nothing I can do anymore, and I am prepared to throw my computer against a wall. It's usually at the wall-throwing point that I contact you.

I've even tried the trusty system restore, and none of the restore points work. I've been as far back as August, and as recent as the 21st. And none of them work, of if they do, which I dont' recall them working, they didn't fix the problem.
Click to expand...
My response to that portion was:
As for the computer problem (and it's no bother), I did a search of Microsoft's Knowledge Base and came back with the following: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;832295 It sounds like you already upgraded to Service Pack 2, which is what the article suggests, even though the symptoms aren't an exact match. It sounds like SP2 doesn't always do the job since they have a hotfix for it. You might try that.

Another possibility is that it has something to do with your hardware rather than the OS. Are you still using a Sony Vaio? If so, could you send me the Series and Model numbers so I could pursue that angle? (Or you can check it out yourself at http://ciscdb.sel.sony.com/perl/select-p-n.pl)
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So, as far as I'm aware, she's using a Sony Vaio notebook that is several years old (pushing 4, I believe). She's got SpyBot, obviously, but also Ad-Aware and either McAfee or Norton's.

Any help would be appriciated.
 
Download the latest video drivers, (from the manufacturers or hardware suppliers website) and install them. The XP2, and windows update, seem to install drivers that don't work. I download everything from windows update, as soon as it appears, EXCEPT, the driver updates.

Of course, this may not solve the problem at all. I have spent many hours sweating away in driver hell. Why should I be the only one.
 
"I CAN reset the resolution, but it inevitably goes back to the small desktop once you shut down."

-So there's something resetting the registry on shutdown. The driver is working.





"I even downloaded the big ass Windows XP download and that didn't help."

-I presume she means SP2, in which case her problem predates the upgrade and so is not caused by it.

Can she recall what she did last time it worked properly- ie before the problem first appeared?

Does the screensize reset at logoff, or only at shutdown?
 
I think Sam's got it -- either it's not saving it's settings properly or something is removing them on boot.

Could be the very anti-spyware programs she has installed to protect her system.
 
I'll send these comments and questions along, or better, link her to this thread. Thanks for the feedback.
 
If your friend can remember when it last worked, Windows XP does have a 'System Restore' thing in Start->programs->accessories->system tools that a surprising number of users are unaware of.

Unfortunately, the stupid thing tends to restore 'everything', including old versions of documents (renaming the current ones), which can make quite a mess if you take the 'Way Back Machine' back very far at all.

But it's been there making backup versions of everything since you bought the computer if you didn't turn it off. If you can remember it was working OK in September, and it hasn't rolled over September, you can navigate the little calendar and click a day.

You'll then have to reinstall anything you installed since that time, and weed through your documents to see if it replaced anything and delete/rename files. This is annoying, and one of the many reasons why moving 'My Documents' (and other files) to a seperate partition or drive from the Windows one, since the only granularity windows provides for their system restore (to selectively turn it off) is drive letter based.
 
Dave- she loaded SP2 after the problem started. SP2 should have made a restore point, but the problem had already started then.
Of course there may be an earlier point.


How would you actually shrink the screen anyway, if you wanted to? Fiddling with resolution settings won't do that, as the creen simply fills up at whatever res is used.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Dave- she loaded SP2 after the problem started. SP2 should have made a restore point, but the problem had already started then.
Of course there may be an earlier point.


How would you actually shrink the screen anyway, if you wanted to? Fiddling with resolution settings won't do that, as the creen simply fills up at whatever res is used.
Click to expand...

Laptop displays (I had a VAIO) don't always scale lowere resolutions up to fit the screen. The VAIO centers it.

There are usually dozens, even hundreds of restore points made automatically while doing other things under XP. I'd have to reboot into XP to give you a count right now, but the last I looked they were happening about weekly, or whenever I did a software install.
 
Soapy Sam said:
How would you actually shrink the screen anyway, if you wanted to? Fiddling with resolution settings won't do that, as the creen simply fills up at whatever res is used.
Click to expand...

As Dave says, it's an LCD screen thing. They often do strange things when resolution is changed.
 
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