Inspiron 8000, Me O/S: Windows open up in miniature after power loss.

Question

I use this old Inspiron solely as a solitaire PC game playing machine. I have downloaded games to another computer, copied them on to CD and then downloaded them to the Inspiron. This worked just fine for several years. In April 2007 it suffered a power loss and when I brought it back up my windows would open up in 1/4 size. It was determined that I needed a new hard drive and I purchased a 74.5 GB (far more than I needed) Western-Digital HD, had it installed (I should have done it myself) and had the Me O/S reinstalled. All went well for the next six months. Then in October 2007 I shut it down and left it off until yesterday. When I started it up the batteries (I have two in it) were pretty much dead (I started it and run it plugged in all the time) and when the screen came back up I have the same miniaturized windows coming up. They come up the same in DOS as in Windows. I cannot see any of my three or four games and cannot figure out how to enlarge the windows so their contents are visible to the naked eye. Going to 'properties' I have my settings at 1600x1200. I have reinstalled Me O/S and all of my NVIDIA GeForce2 Go drivers, all to no avail. I have taken out the HD and put it back in, just in case that is the problem, it isn't. What is?       Can a HD be damaged if it loses power? This is a brand new HD with only five months of usage and only 5GB (4.99) are being used. 512 RAM.

jackshack · Answer

You seem to have tried most of the things I would have tried.  There is one more I can think of; if the hardware is still ok you may be able to expand the screen by pressing the Fn and F7 keys at the same time.

Noah Vaile · Answer

Thank you. Another valiant effort.

I cannot believe that my hard drive was corrupted by low power but that seems tyo be the case,

Last time DELL chat first told me I needed a new disk drive, I did/do not.

Then they said I needed anew copy of the Me install disk. Again I did/do not.

Finally they suggested a new HD, which I did get and it worked.

Same thing this time. Low power led to a miniaturization of the screen. It seems to be a hardware problem although I can't understand it.

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