screen won't resize

[asabour]

When I try to change resolutions, my screen will change to that resolution but it will be much smaller, with black all around the edges. For example, when I try to go to 800x600, my desktop will show just in the center of the screen, with about 3" of black all around it. I updated my drivers and everything. I have Geforce 440 Go and Dell Inspiron 8200 with XP professional. Any tips would help, thanks.

Also, when I try to play games (such as starcraft), the same problem occurs.

 

[Noema]

Are you using an LCD? If you are, my bet is when you try to use a resolution lower than your native res, the screen just shows the actual pixels, like for example with 800x600, you are seeing indeed 800x600 pixels and the black borders make up for the unused pixels, instead of the image being stretched and scaled to fit in the monitor. Since starcraft doesn't provide high resolutions the same problem happens.

I believe there's a setting at the nVidia control panel to change that. That, or your monitor might provide the option to make lower resolutions be stretched.

EDIT: Yes, there's a setting in the control panel for that. Go to 'Digital Flat Panel settings' and select 'Monitor Scaling', instead of centered output.