Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I had this machine a day before I upgraded from Win95 to XP Pro and it seems to me that I had lots of video modes when it was running Win95, but now it's just 800X600 or 1024X768 in either 16 bit or 32 bit., no 24 bit The card says its a Trident Cyber9397 with a huge 4mb of video ram.

Under "Advanced" it has other modes shown, but not under the general "Settings" tab. When I go into 800X600 mode the screen shrinks and I can't figure out how to expand it. Tell me all you know about this thing!

Wondering in Woodinville

Your 770ED has a native screen resolution of 1024x768. I would recommend using that resolution, especially when running XP, unless you have some specific reason to prefer a smaller resolution.

When you switch your resolution to 800x600, you are getting normal screen shrinkage, as your LCD has 1024 pixels across it and if you only use 800 of them, then it will center the display and leave a border around it. Windoze XP I think tries to discourage people from reducing their screen resolution below a certain level, so you may not find all the options available under regular settings.

You can force the 800x600 image to be interpolated onto 1024x768 pixels, but this will add blur to most text and images. Under Windoze 98SE you could press Fn+F8 to control this. Under XP I'm not sure if the Function key works. If not, you should be able to go into Access IBM -> Thinkpad Configuration -> Display and then enable or disable "screen expansion". But if you have ClearType enabled, then I expect your fonts will get screwed up if you enable screen expansion (XP might not even let you do it, I don't know).

The built-in XP ClearType font control is much better than the screen expansion interpreter that is built into your machine's video card, and that is why I would recommend using your full 1024x768 screen resolution. If you want to increase font sizes so you can read your screen more easily, that is better accomplished by increasing the default font sizes through XP display settings, than by forcing your screen down to 800x600 and then artifically expanding it back up to 1024x768 again.

Regarding your colour depth, I think the normal selections are either "High Color" (16 bit) or True Color (32 bit). I'm not sure what to recommend in terms of those settings, but I always use the highest colour depth possible for whatever screen resolution I'm using. Your video card was designed to display "true color" at 1024x768.

Phil.

Hi,

ive got a problem in that area, too. I use WinXP.

Want to use a program which is written to run in a window with 800x600.
But content is to small - so i want to expand the screen.

I tried the tp config tool to change setting "screen expansion", i tried the DOS tool ps2.exe with parameter "hvexp on" - both is making no difference.

I tried reboots and also shortcuts like Fn+Spacekey.

What can i do to expand 800x600 to my 1280x1024 lcd dispay?

Best regards and thanks in advance,

mb277

I just found out, that everything works properly when i change COLORdepth to 16bit!!