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Dell C840 video is showing small windows

1278 Views 4 Replies 2 Participants Last post by  gibsongk55, 
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Hi,

I have a Dell lattitude C840 I gave to my niece. She used it to play games of course. It was fine for about a year since I gave it to her and she was playing a game with a friend (so I am told) when all of a sudden the fonts got smaller. So I checked it out and I noticed a new icon in the icon tray it was Microsoft Validation failure. It seems something was saying the Windows is not genuine. This is really odd because it is real Windows XP and I reinstalled it all about 2 years ago with Dells tech support with all the drivers.

Anyway I reinstalled windows XP and installed the drivers. The windows are still small. Example: I open control panel and the windows frame is small. When booting the Dell logo is small and so is Windows. I tried changing the resolution. I can only get the screen to fill the entire display but still small. I tried changing the bios setting for video to system and when booting the dell logo is bigger and so is windows but once windows is fully loaded back to the same again. I tried updating the bios but the dell driver says it's current and will not do the install. I also tried searching and tried the Fn + F7 i think it was to toggle display but that didn't do anything.


Any ideas I would appreciate it.

Gibs
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reventon
Have you got the latest graphics driver from Dell?

Can you upload a photo of how the screen looks if possible
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reventon said:
Have you got the latest graphics driver from Dell?

Can you upload a photo of how the screen looks if possible
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Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I have the latest driver for nvidia installed. I have to go back over to her house and do a screen shot. Anything else you need? I won't be able to go over there until next week it's pretty far from here.

Thanks,

Gibs
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reventon
I tried changing the bios setting for video to system and when booting the dell logo is bigger and so is windows but once windows is fully loaded back to the same again.
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Change that setting so it looks normal on the boot, then try to change the resolution in Windows.

Something for you to consider, seeing as you have already re-installed it once, is another re-install. But this time using Killdisk before installing, which will ensure that the traces of the previous install are completely gone.

Regards,
Reventon
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reventon said:
Change that setting so it looks normal on the boot, then try to change the resolution in Windows.

Something for you to consider, seeing as you have already re-installed it once, is another re-install. But this time using Killdisk before installing, which will ensure that the traces of the previous install are completely gone.

Regards,
Reventon
Click to expand...
Hi,

Thanks for your help. Once windows downloaded and installed the SP2 everything is back to normal. Don't know what happened to the system before. But reinstalling windows and the drivers didn't fix it until SP2 was installed.

Thanks again.

Gibs
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