Laptop Not Playing Games at Fullscreen

pseudonym

Ok, I have an older Dell CPi laptop with something like a 333mhz P2. I just use it for netsurfing and such, but before the LAN I got Starcraft and threw it on here. Runs great BUT it only runs in a small part of the screen (It'll load the game like normal, but it only plays in a 3x5 card sized window surrounded in black). I wasn't too annoyed since I really didn't think I was going to play it much, but then I found that Tie Fighter actually runs correctly on this computer in all its 640x480 HIGH RES GLORY!!! Problem is, its still in that little damn window. It also runs in that little window if I scale down the resolution in windows (Go to 640x480 and in the small window it goes) go to 1280xWhatever and it stretches past the edges. Is this a driver problem, or is it just something to do with this older laptop? Any ideas?

primesuspect

i THINK there's a setting for that in the BIOS of all places - something about screen scaling....

pseudonym

Ooooh, maybe my thread camping paid off. BRB.

pseudonym

*sigh* Not there. Wonder if a bios flash would add that option. It runs fullscreen at bootup, its only when it gets to loading windows and such that it shrinks things down and then it goes back to fullscreen at the desktop because I have the resolution set at 1024. Is there a windows option somewhere I'm missing?

TheBaron

well, you could always do what i suggested in the other thread, and boot off a dos diskette with a custom config.sys

TheBaron

with that said, when you right click on a shortcut to a game in winXP under the compatability tab you can set "run in 640x480"

pseudonym

I'm going to try a bootdisk tomorrow. To do that though, I'll have to use the bootdisk, take out the floppy drive, put in the cdrom drive, and hope that I can get it to mount the cdrom.

I can't tell it to run in 640x480 because it already is running in it, just not scaled to the size of the screen. It will run the desktop in that window if I set the regular resolution to 640x480. It has to be some type of screen scaling deal. Oh yeah, its hard to play with the touchpad

pseudonym

Well forget this, now I can't get sound to work... Stupid new soundcards not working with old games. I weep

TheBaron

you can borrow my 486 if you want

pseudonym

TheBaron wrote:

you can borrow my 486 if you want

Actually, I have been thinking of ideas to get this running...

1) Somehow hunt me down an old beater computer.
2) Hunt down an old soundblaster 16/AWE32 etc (The game hates anything with onboard sound), and put it in my 800mhz machine (Win 2000 seems to be doing a good job of running the game at the right speed.)
3)Break out the old 400mhz monster (Too much work for my lazy ass, and that has onboard sound too i think!!)

I think the 2nd option is the best. Now to find my $5 sound card

bronco-guy

pseudonym wrote:

Ok, I have an older Dell CPi laptop with something like a 333mhz P2. I just use it for netsurfing and such, but before the LAN I got Starcraft and threw it on here. Runs great BUT it only runs in a small part of the screen (It'll load the game like normal, but it only plays in a 3x5 card sized window surrounded in black). I wasn't too annoyed since I really didn't think I was going to play it much, but then I found that Tie Fighter actually runs correctly on this computer in all its 640x480 HIGH RES GLORY!!! Problem is, its still in that little damn window. It also runs in that little window if I scale down the resolution in windows (Go to 640x480 and in the small window it goes) go to 1280xWhatever and it stretches past the edges. Is this a driver problem, or is it just something to do with this older laptop? Any ideas?

just press fn f7 i have the same laptop as you and it worked
i upgraded to toshiba and i have the same problem now i don't know what to do

mmonnin

Dude, this thread is nearly 4 years old....