Appearance of LCD at resolutions lower than default

Choose Your Product

No Product Selected

Select Product

Appearance of LCD at resolutions lower than default - ThinkPad General

Symptom
The ThinkPad display looks distorted, blurred, or appears in a window when run at lower resolutions.

Configuration
Any ThinkPad with an LCD capable of displaying a resolution of 800x600 or greater

Solution
The ThinkPad LCD display is behaving as designed.

Additional information
The Thinkpad display does not fill the entire LCD
Unlike conventional desktop monitors which can dynamically change the resolution displayed on the screen, LCD displays have a fixed resolution. If the LCD display is capable of displaying a resolution of 1024x768 then it has exactly 1024 rows and 768 columns in the display. This number cannot increase or decrease based on the resolution settings. As a result, when displaying something at a lower resolution the LCD displays the image in a smaller "window" of the larger display. This results in what appears to be a black border around the displayed image.

To stretch the image so that it fills the entire LCD display, you can enable Screen Expansion. To enable screen expansion you can either press the FN+F8 keys on the ThinkPad keyboard or type the following command from a MS-DOS prompt: C:\Thinkpad\PS2 HVEXP ON.

NOTE: You must have ThinkPad Utilities for DOS installed on the system to use the PS2 command.

The Thinkpad display appears distorted in lower resolutions
If Screen Expansion is enabled, it will stretch an image to fit the entire display. As a result of this, the image displayed may appear distorted. To disable screen expansion, press the FN+F8 keys on the ThinkPad keyboard or type the following from a MS-DOS prompt: C:\Thinkpad\PS2 HVEXP OFF.

NOTE: By disabling Screen Expansion, when displaying an image in a smaller resolution that what the display supports, the image will have a black border around it as described above.