what's up with my screen
 

dell inspiron 8000

when booting, my dell logo window doesn't fill the entire screen, it fills up less than half of it. i get this lil 4X4 box. samething when windows and linux are booting up. but, windows goes back to normal, and linux stays small, with about a 6X8 window. i can't work like this. is this something that has to do with bios, like a configuration i can fix? it can't be my motherboard, memory, video card, or modem, since they where all just replaced about 4 hours ago by dell(thnk goodness for 5 yr warranties, this one runs out next month :-D).

HELP!!! thnx

I dont think its a BIOS thing. It looks more like a kernel or X problem. Please post kernel version and Xfree version.

i am running rh9. so, basicly, what ever comes with that.:confused:

I have a Dell Inspiron 3800, and get the same thing when I boot. With windows, it goes into a small box when I set the resolution to 800 X 640, but fills the screen when the resolution is 1024 X 768. When I installed Red Hat 9.0, I just automatically set the resolution to 1024 X 768. If your resolution is 800 X 640 in Linux, this may be your problem.

Matthew Doak

Galations 2:20

i don't see how this is a problem, though. shouldn't the laptop be able to handle the different settings? i mean, come on, it just recently did this. first it started in windows, a few months after installing it, i have my lid down for a second, and when i popped it back open, it just happened, the screen size itself went smaller, but the icons stayed the same. and then, one day, my opening dell screen, boot screen, and everything else from then on did the same thing. now that dell replaced everything in my laptop, windows is back to normal, but linux and everything else stayed the same. by the way, my linux res atm is 1024X768

I'm not sure why it is doing it. It started with me after i got the motherboard replaced because of a defect. It never bothered me because it only happened on start up. Its another story when it happens after the OS is loaded like on your's. The technician who replaced the motherboard said it was a driver thing, but I doubt that since it happens in linux too. It might be a bios thing as well, although I don't see anything in mine that mentions it.
Hope you get it working.

Matthew Doak

called dell, found out all i had to do is hit the function key and f7. got that over with.

I found that all Linux versions required the frambuffer module to be loaded to get full screen re on my laptop (Sony GRZ). Thereafter no problems.