What caused resolution change?

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The resolution of the first screen that comes up when I turn on my computer, when the BIOS is loading has always been like 800by 600. Very large letters. and the nest screen for choosing which OS to boot to, as I have a dual boot situation, was the same. The other day I rebooted and the resolution had changed to my regular screen resolution 1680 by 1050.
What could have caused this? Windows doesn’t control this does it?

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You probably got a video card driver update, that handles the boot resolution a bit better.

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I didn’t go looking for one. This wouldn’t happen with Windows Update would it?

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I’ve got a NVIDIA GeForce driver for my 8800 GT sitting in Windows update right now as an “optional” update.
I’ve chosen not to download anything so it just sits there. If you have automatic updates set to download (bad) and
instal everything it has (worse) it will.

Go through your recent updates to confirm a driver instalation. If it did occurred it should be listed there.

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The only updates that weren’t high priority were .Net framework updates. would this have caused this?

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I’ve never seen Net Framework cause a resolution change before.
It’s only the bootmenu and pre bios screen?
Any changes while in the os?
Any recent changes in the bios, or a recent flash?

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yes only the bootmenu and pre bios screen.
No changes to bios nor any recent flashes

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Well, here’s another shot in the dark; see if changing you monitors refresh rate has any
change on the boot screen resolution.

Some distros of Linux can alter the boot screen resolution too.

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This is a laptop and I don’t believe I can change the refresh rate.

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My guess would be that you’ve somehow turned off screen expansion. Most laptops will have a setting somewhere to choose between stretching a screen like the lo-res boot screens to fill the whole screen, or displaying it unstretched and surrounded by black. (Maybe even a third choice to stretch but keep the aspect ratio correct).
In my Thinkpad laptop it is in BIOS and called “HV Expansion”.

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I don’t know how I could have done this but I will check my bios.

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Thanks Tim your guess was right. Screen expansion is disabled. I don’t know how this happened, I know I didn’t do it. At least I know what happened to change it.
Is there a way to mark a problem solved?

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You just did.

Thanks for posting back.

Joe

--Joe

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