Hi Kees...

 have you tried the key combination FN and F7 to remove the black border and maximize the screen.

Bench

Hey Bench,

 

Thanks for your response! But alas... been there, done that...

It's driving me up the wall!

Anyone else a suggestion? Please...!?

 

Kees.

So, you went to the video settings, advanced button, displays tab.

Click the "LCD panel" button

On this new window, click on the blue button next to the word "Scale image" a check mark will appear and the selection to choose what mode, either stretch or maintain aspect ratio will become available.

If it only works in the max resolution, it will still work because whatever you choose will be the setting no matter what resolution you go to after that.

According to your logic, porkfatty, the black borders would never have appeared in the first place, since the 'scale' option is 'on' by default. So no, that's not it either.

IT JUST DOESN'T SCALE!!!  The only way I can get this screen to scale is to use a tv as secondary screen and clone that resolution. But that sort of makes this laptop even less portable... it alread weighs as much as the universe, if I have to drag my tv with me everywhere as well... pfff.

 

Kees.

I'm sorry as well, but you did say this: "It is there only when it doesn't need to do anything, when the resolution is already set to the highest 1920x1200 setting" in regards to the ability to select scaling.

Are you saying you have the ability to scale it in the highest resolution? But of course scaling the screen with it in 1920x1200 would do nothing.

Have you tried setting it to scale the video in the highest resolution, closing the video settings, then changing the resolution to a lower one to see if your choice to scale remained?

I have found that once you choose your option, it is in effect for all resolutions. Maybe this is a workaround?

Sorry guys, WUXGA + ATI combo cannot scale some resolutions, following except from FAQ I have up at notebook forums:

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4.(vi) How come the display won't stretch to the full screen in games?

Sometimes you may find that games or other applications will not fill up the entire LCD panel when they are not running in the normal native widescreen resolution of your display. Instead they will "letterbox", that is, play within a black box with bars on the sides and/or top and bottom. There are several steps that must be taken to remedy this.

-> Firstly is to ensure scaling is enabled in the BIOS. To do that follow these steps:
(i) Reboot the laptop;
(ii) Press F2 on the Dell splash screen, and you will enter the BIOS;
(iii) Scroll to the Basic Device Configuration page;
(iv) You will see an option Video Expansion, make sure this is enabled;
(v) Exit whilst saving changes, and the system will reboot, this time let it go into windows.

-> Now we make sure scaling is activated within the ATI drivers. Follow these steps:
(i) Right-click desktop and select Properties;
(ii) Go to the Settings tab and click Advanced;
(iii) Go to the Displays tab and click Panel;
(iv) In here, make sure Scale Image is ticked. After this you have two options->
1. Select the Expand to full panel size radio button if you want all resolutions to stretch and fill the entire LCD screen.
2. Select the Expand while maintaining aspect ratio radio button if you want the resolutions to expand as far as possible but not get distorted out of their ratio (ie: in most cases this will mean that the game/ image will fill the entire Vertical span of the panel with a black bar on either side to keep it in aspect).

And there you go, that should set you up well to be viewing that widescreen in all of its magnificence. Once you've had "fat", you'll never go back

Note: The WUXGA screen + ATI video card combo cannot scale some resolutions to the full panel, regardless of whether you apply the settings mentioned above. The following is the reason that I have been able to ascertain thus far.

ATI uses an on-chip solution for scaling images from one resolution to another. It uses technology which is generally better than the comparable nVIDIA cards, but because it is scaling via a hardware solution there is a limitation.

Any image that is at or below 1280x1024 pixels in size will scale to the full size of the panel as it is supposed to. However, that max resolution clearly excludes 1680x1050 (WSXGA native resolution) and 1600x1200 (popular high-res game option). Basically all that will happen is the scaler will start and subsequently fail, and will then just display the image/ game as normal, except with black borders around so it only takes up the exact amount of pixels as its resolution needs.

This limitation will only show on a system with a WUXGA screen, any other screen (WXGA, WSXGA) it won't because obviously their resolutions don't go up that far anyway. This problem exists in every ATI video card thus far and will affect any laptop with an ATI card and WUXGA screen... from the i8500 w/ M9 to the XPS w/ M11.

This is unfortunate firstly because there is no known fix for the issue, and secondly because Inspiron XPS owners can only order with the WUXGA LCD option which means that they are stuck with it. However whilst it is a major annoyance in the desktop where users want to rest their eyes and work in the comfort of 1680 x 1050 but cannot, in games it makes little difference as the current video cards offered in the i9100 and XPS cannot play most new games at resolutions this high smoothly anyway (at least not on high detail....).

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stu

Well... it seems I have my answer... thanks, porkfatty and stu!

Pfff... I have to say I've become less and less impressed with Dell. I need this huge monster for videopresentations, but it would've been nice of Dell to mention that you need 20-20 vision to be able to use it. Ah well... I guess I'll finally buy some glasses. But for now, I'm switching this brick off and I'm going on vacation! Byeeee!!

 

Kees.

OK...  I've been lurking and reading for a bit here and I still can't seem to find a solution.   I understand that some resolutions will not display properly on this laptop (Ins. 9100, ATI 9700 video, wuxga...)  but I have read that some resolutions will be fine. 

Most games I play have so many options for resolution that I cant imagine there should be any issues.  All my games default below the suggested range ("Any image that is at or below 1280x1024 pixels in size will scale to the full size of the panel as it is supposed to.") 

I have set up the video expansion in the BIOS.  Then when I go into the display tab, the panel option can be selected but once inside that screen everything is grayed out and I can make no changes.  I tried the trusty help feature and it mentions that the little circle icon in the top left of the panel section of the display tab should be highlighted green.   But it is not...  Im not sure that the green highlighting is relevant or not since I can actually select the panel option but none of the other monitor options.  

I just need to know why my options are grayed out in the panel section.  If I cant get a basic 800X600 resolution to display full screen then this $2800 laptop is going back for a cheaper screen that actually works...

BTW I owned an 8500 w/sxga that never had an issue with anything, but some jerk decided to break into my house and steal it...

Well when I got up this morning I went into the BIOS again and toggled the video expansion to off, rebooted and then toggled it on.  After that I was able to select scale image in the panel screen.  Not sure what I did wrong last night but the instructions in this thread do work for 9100 owners (Obviously excluding the restricted resolutions).  Thanks.