John,

Here is the thing I formatted the drive and installed Linspire.   I was informed to update the bios by them which is no problem to me.  I just want to make sure that this will fix the problem with Linspire and not just Microsoft software. 

Since you responded can you update the video adapter on a Inspiron 1100 Laptop.  Or am I stuck with the current video adapter.  I would like to get an NVdia card or ATI card.  But I keep hearing this is impossible to do.

 

 

Thanks for you response.

You can always try the Fn+F7 key combo to stretch it to the edges.  It is a BIOS call.

You cannot change the video adapter in the 1100.

If screen resolutions less then the native resolution of your lcd are small and centered, then hitting Fn+F7 (software in the BIOS), will stretch them to fill the screen.  This is totally independant of which OS you are running.

And you are hearing correctly about the video capabilities of the 1100.  It is a budget notebook.

What video card do you have? I have a Inspiron 2600 with Intel 830. I got higher than 8bit resolution when I upgraded the BIOS. It turns out for some reason Dell fixes how much memory the video card gets on boot up. My old BIOS only reserved 1MB (hence the 8bit res.) The new BIOS reservered 8MB. The OS is suppose to "steal" the remaineder. After that everything worked. But it took some time for Dell to fix it. In the meantime I had to patch the kernel for it to work.