Comments on: How do I make full screen applications stop stretching on wide screen LCD?

Question: How do I make full screen applications stop stretching on wide screen LCD?

PowerCat — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:27:08 -0800

How do I make it so that full screen applications won't stretch on my new wide screen LCD?

I got an EEE PC 900 and put windows xp on it.
I installed a couple of games, but I find it extremely annoying that they stretch to fit the whole screen.
Is there a way to make it so that it won't anymore?

By: holgate

holgate — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:38:28 -0800

Some games have a 'widescreen' setting. Others let you set a screen resolution to match the aspect ratio, even if it's not as high as the one you use normally.

Which games?

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:47:54 -0800

I had the same problem with Microsoft's "Pandora's Box" and with the updated Windows version of Myst. No widescreen choice; they just take over the screen and set it to the display resolution they know about, irrespective of whether that matches the aspect ratio. (In the case of "Pandora's Box" they set the display to 800*600. On my 8:5 LCD display (native resolution 1920*1200), it looks terribly stretched horizontally.

Like PowerCat, what I want is a way to tell Windows, "Even though this game wants to run full-screen, run it in a window instead." Is there any way to do that?

But I'll settle for "full screen except don't use the full width, so that the aspect ratio remains correct."

By: chairface

chairface — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:54:41 -0800

Hard to say with laptops but most widescreen monitors have onscreen controls to enable/disable scaling & stretching. Failing that, most video cards' control panels also have similar settings.

By: PowerCat

PowerCat — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:15:41 -0800

The games I'm running are diablo 2, starcraft and half life.

D2 can be windowed, but I'd rather it be full screen.
Starcraft runs at low res and I think half life has a wide screen setting, I forgot.

By: PowerCat

PowerCat — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:26:44 -0800

chairface had it.

The first time around, I only installed the drivers, not the utility.
After installing the utility and drivers, I found the option to stop the application from stretching.

Thanks!