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[Alex B]

After a reboot one of our laptops suddenly has only a part of the display area available. The LCD screen is normally 1280x800, but now it shows only a 1024x768 area starting from the top left corner. The right and bottom sides of the display have totally unused stripes.

So far I have updated the display drivers and the motherboard BIOS program, tried all possible display driver setting and bios setup combinations and spent hours searching the internet, but still to no avail.

It seems like the display type reported by the hardware has suddenly changed to "1024x768 LCD panel". The problem is visible already at the boot stage and in the bios setup screen. An external monitor seems to work normally and all usual resolution settings are available.

The laptop is Acer Aspire 3263wxci. The chipset is Intel Alviso-G i910GML and the video adapter is Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (uses shared memory).

Maybe someone has experienced a similar phenomenon and can help.

[NickM]

If your video chipset uses shared memory with the rest of the machine, it could be that (some of) the memory had failed.

[Alex B]

Thanks for the reply. I tried both installed memory modules separately but that didn't help.

I can only assume that the display has an odd HW problem.

Unfortunately the laptop is out of warranty and repairing it might became relatively expensive (the original purchase price was about $700 a couple of years ago).

[jgreen]

If you are seeing a CLEAN presentation of 1024X768, then I don't think it's hardware.  I think there's a rogue DIP in the firmware that's doing this for you.  Especially since the monitor out is showing proper 1280x.  I suggest going back and looking through all the software settings again.  Whatever you do, don't throw this book out--I'm betting it will eventually correct itself.

Just out of curiosity, you didn't do a recent Windows Update or BIOS flash, did you? 

[rjm]

It's not uncommon for laptop display cables to become unseated from the motherboard. Usually this results in intermittent black screens but I am wondering if it could cause the problem you are seeing. Try re-seating the cable.

[that_stevens_guy]

My Toshiba A100 used to do this when I had a SD or XD mass storage device in the card reader slot. Mainly did it when the laptop was on battery, I found removing the memory chips fixed it Your problem seems different though... Sure the laptop isn't stuck in some presentation mode? 1024x768 is a common projector resolution...

[jad]

Hi, got the same problem with my Acer Aspire 5630.
Just wondering if anyone had found the way to fix it.

Cheers

[Alex B]

jgreen was right. It eventually corrected itself.

The laptop was used without a fix for some time (mostly with an external monitor). Since the internal display had the problem we started to use more and more other PCs and finally the laptop was left unused for several months.

In last October I decided to boot it and to my surprise the problem was gone.

I can only assume that the wrong display setting had somehow ended up to a hidden part of the BIOS settings and it was not resetted before the laptop was completely out of power. I did previously keep the battery removed for a day or so when I tried to fix the problem, but probably the PC can store enough power to hold the BIOS settings much longer. Now the main battery had probably been empty for months.

On the other hand, it could have been a loose connector or jumper. Back then in February, I removed the outer bottom cover, but that didn't provide access to anything that could be related. I didn't go on and try to disassemble the PC completely.

EDIT

The display was like this:



The black area was totally dead. The complete Windows desktop was corretly displayed in the 1024x768 area like someone had replaced the original display element with a smaller one.