Screen/video problem - please help

[Clockface]

For the time I've had my laptop (IBM T20 laptop, 128MB, Windows
98SE) two months or so, whenever I have booted up the laptop, it
starts as all Windows 98 PC's do, by a black screen with white text
(hardware stuff, CONFIG.SYS, whatever), then Windows loads and the
Windows 98 desktop appears.

However, until today, when the PC was booted, the white text (in DOS
mode, as Windows is still loading) was stretched full screen, and the
text was slightly out of proportion as the DOS resolution of 320x200
(or whatever it is) was mapped to the LCD's physical resolution of
1024x800. Also, whenever I opend a full screen DOS box (by selecting
MS-DOS prompt from Windows) then the full screen turned black (of
course) and the white text of whatever DOS was showing was stretched
to full screen. And if I ran any DOS games they went to full screen,
albeit with slightly distorted graphics as the low resolution of the
DOS game was mapped to the laptops 1024x800. I'm not complaing about
the distortion, of course, it's a fact of the LCD display that non-
divisable resolutions will be out of proportion slightly, and the
effect is very negligable.

Today, however, I booted up my PC (I didn't watch it boot up), and I
clicked on the MS-DOS icon so that Windows would open a full screen
DOS box, and I could use DOS. The full screen DOS box opened, but the
actual DOS output was only showing in the middle of the screen, i.e.
the 320x200 DOS output was mapped perfectly to the middle 320x200
pixels of the LCD screen, and the surrounding area was black. The DOS
output wasn't being stretched to full screen. I reset the PC, and
when it began booting up, the same problem came on straight away, the
booting up text was tiny and centred instead of being mapped across
the full LCD screen. Windows is fine (it's a 1024x800 desktop), but
any DOS program/game just uses the middle of the screen now, I get
the full DOS output, but it is one DOS pixel to one LCD pixel so only
the centre of the screen is used, as though the screen has a very
thick black border around it.

I've tried re-installing the driver, but it hasn't solved it. I
presume it's a setting either in the BIOS or something, but I don't
know what. Help!

Thanks for any replies.

[GomJabbar]

A couple of possibilities.

In Windows, right click on an open area of the desktop, choose Properties > Settings > Advanced > Displays. Click on the middle LCD Panel button. Make sure that "Scale image to panel size is" is checked.

If that doesn't do it, reboot and press F1 at the beginning of the start sequence. When you get into the BIOS, choose under Display, HV expansion ON.

I believe one of the two above options should do it for you.

[Clockface]

GomJabbar, many thanks - it turns out that pressing [Fn] + [F8] toggles the screen stretch feature on and off.

If only every problem in life could be solved by someone on a forum...