Black Bar On left and Right of screen - Games not full screen

Hi guys,

I believe most of us who use Laptop with any ATI Graphic Card will face this problem. Which is When you run your game for example Warcraft III or any game with fullscreen mode, the screen didn't stretch and you can see black lines with the width about 3CM on the left and right of your games windows. This is caused by your graphic card setting which force your games to run under the specified aspect ratio.

Refer picture below if you don't understand what I meant about the game run under Aspect Ratio.

I want to tell you a same problem as the above that i have with my Compact CQ40 with ATI Radeon HD3200 as the Graphic Card.

Usually the problem occur with the Laptop with ATI Graphic Card, i just don't know why. It happen to me when i'm reformated my laptop from windows XP to windows 7. The option is "greyed" in windows 7 when i open the ATI Catalyst centre. Even though i installed the latest driver, the problem still persist.

Finally i have the solution while googling for something in the net.

Step 1 : Change your desktop resolution from the highest to lower resolution.
For windows 7, go to Start> Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Display > Look On the Left of the windows and Click "Adjust Resolution". Then on the "Resolution" menu, Set your resolution to "1024X768" and click "Apply" > "OK". Refer Picture below. (should be the same for Win Vista)

Step 2 : Open you ATI Catalyst Centre
Look on your taskbar. Taskbar is located on the bottom of your laptop screen. Contain Start Button, Clock, etc. Now, look on the left of your laptop clock. and click the small "upward Arrow". Refer picture below. and Double click on your ATI Catalyst Centre ( Red In Color ). The main page should opened for you.

Step 3 : Choose "Advance Setting" and click "NEXT"

Step 4 : Choose Desktop & Display
You should see a laptop screen figure at the bottom of the ATI Catalyst centre windows. If not, it may be in different tabs. Try to find the laptop screen icon/figure. Refer Picture below. If under the Desktop & Display doesn't have the windows that look almost like below, try to find it in different tabs. As, for different ATI Graphic card may have different setting board. :)

Step 6 : Now that you see the laptop screen figure/icon at the bottom of the ATI catalyst centre windows, right click on it and choose Configure.

Step 7 : Now the, option of the setting of your laptop screen shouldn't be GREYED anymore because you already change your laptop resolution to a lower resolution earlier right? thats the key actually.

Step 8 : There are 3 option now and it doesn't greyed out. Now you can choose the Fullscreen option. And Click APPLY. And your done!!!

*** Note that different laptop have different type of ATI Catalyst Centre but the pattern is the same. I also found this problem in my Laptop with NVIDIA GeForce102M. The pattern of solving is almost the same ***

Once you done this a few times, you will not have anymore problem. Hope this helps!!!

MAY I ASK FOR YOUR SMALL AMOUNT OF TIME??? PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT IF THIS GUIDE HELPS YOU AND IF YOU HAVE ANOTHER METHOD, FEEL FREE TO SHARE... THANKS!