Honey, I've Shrunk the Computer...

[PapSett]

Or, more precisely, the computer shrunk itself sometime overnight.

I have a HP Laptop someone gave me, no instruction manual with it. When I shut down last night before bed, everything was just fine. This morning, I booted it up and EVERYTHING on it is tiny. Pictures, icons, windows, typing... everything is about half it's normal size. I can barely see to type this.

I did NOTHING to it to cause this, just shut it down as normal. I looked for something that said settings and didn't find anything. I am computer challenged.

I feel like I'm losing my mind because I can't really SEE where the extra space went, even, it's just... smaller. Even my desktop picture went from filling the screen to a small image in the middle. If I had someone else in the house I would think someone was playing a joke on me, but since I live alone... well, I have no idea what happened.

Help, please, before I go blind trying to read this tiny crap!!

[What Exit?]

Reboot the machine and keep tapping F8 as it starts to enter safe mode. Once in Safe Mode, you can right click on the desktop and choose properties and set the resolution to something low like 800x600. If on Windows Vista when you right click you need to click personalize and then Display Properties.

Good luck.

[PapSett]

OK... i did reboot... several times. Did the F8 tapping, started in safe mode. No internet. I am running Vista. When it was in safe mode, everything went back to normal sized, but when I took it out of safe mode to gain internet, it went right back to tiny again...

[ivan astikov]

If you are running XP, you can right click on the desktop screen, click on "properties", click the "settings" tab on the top right, and use the sliding bar on the left of the dialog box to alter your screen resolution.


oops, soz. missed the "Vista" bit. ignore me, i'll just wander off shamefaced.

[PapSett]

Well, I've been playing around with it some more and found a slide bare for resolution. I have everything bigger now... a little less sharp, but WAY better than tiny.

What would have caused it to change on its own like that??

[Campionaki]

Sometimes updates will cause system settings to change.

Or you could have a ghost living in your house. *shrug*

[Campionaki]

Sometimes updates will cause system settings to change.

Or you could have a ghost living in your house. *shrug*

[PapSett]

LOL... I have often thought that I DO have a ghost living here, some weird shit goes on in this house.... I just didn't realize they were computer literate!