# Bugger of a problem

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bugger-of-a-problem/34824>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 28, 2000, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bugger-of-a-problem/34824 "2000-09-28T00:36:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sequent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Sequent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sequent)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2000, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bugger-of-a-problem/34824/1 "2000-09-28T00:36:09Z")

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I’ve got this nifty little computer that I left unplugged for about a week when going out of town. When I came back, plugged it in, by 1024x768 resolution was _whacked_. Everything’s huge: icons, fonts, the whole bit. I can pan around to cover the whole screen; my screen would have to be four times as large to hold it all. The display properties in Win 98 says that the resolution’s still 1024, and I didn’t change anything else. Can anyone help?

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**Author:** ![mrblue92](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@mrblue92](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrblue92)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2000, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bugger-of-a-problem/34824/2 "2000-09-28T01:33:28Z")

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Some video cards support having a larger desktop area than what you can see on the screen–they have two settings in display properties: screen area and desktop area. If you’ve got two settings, make sure they’re set to the same resolution mode.

If it’s not that, I’d try changing to a different mode (640x480) and back again.

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**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2000, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bugger-of-a-problem/34824/3 "2000-09-28T01:49:52Z")

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I have something called STBvision which does excatly that and you can choose different sceen and desktop areas. Sometimes it is useful when you want more detail but mostly I don’t use it. The place to look is the system tray icons or right click on the desktop and then properties.

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**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2000, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bugger-of-a-problem/34824/4 "2000-09-28T15:36:27Z")

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If the question was put in the subject field, it would have got better answers. Also, someone just mentioned this exact thing happening. Probably the accessiblity setting was changed to learn for easy reading?

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**Author:** ![Sequent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Sequent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sequent)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2000, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bugger-of-a-problem/34824/5 "2000-09-28T22:54:51Z")

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Point taken, handy–thanks. And thanks to everyone for the input–indeed it was the desktop area setting; God only knows how much more stumbling it would have taken on my part to figure that out. Thanks again, y’all…