[Norgermish]

First to say thank you for reviewing this post,
I have a Dell C600 Latitude. At start up everything seems fine until the desktop appears. It only is a small square surrounded by black The picture is fine just rather small.
I have hooked up an external monitor and then touched Fn/F8 keys. The display opens on external monitor the same as the laptop ....small. When I press F8 again it then displays on the external monitor correctly, full screen. ??
I have seen some posts on this issue but my problem is I cannot find a correct driver for this laptop. Using the service tag I searched dell and it says ...no drivers available for this computer.
Then I found that it should have the ATI Radeon 128 2X card. I dl'd the driver along with DirectX 8 and installed . When instalation was almost complete it said that this driver was not compatible with the installed hardware.
I disable /uninstalled the driver in Device manager and it seems that it is running only on Win 2x drivers .

I wonder why it is capable of working on external at full screen and not on the laptop?
I cannot change resolution or expand screen either.

Thanks for any help

[Advertisements]

Hi, try this for me.

1) Remove any external keyboards from the computer.
2) Restart the computer.
3) When the Dell™ logo appears, press the <Fn> + <F7> key combination.

Why can you not change resolution?

What Operating System are you running? There is a video driver here for 95/98/ME.

[The Admiral]

Hi, try this for me.

1) Remove any external keyboards from the computer.
2) Restart the computer.
3) When the Dell™ logo appears, press the <Fn> + <F7> key combination.

Why can you not change resolution?

What Operating System are you running? There is a video driver here for 95/98/ME.

[Norgermish]

Hi thanks for the post,

I did start the computer as you said and found that once the desktop loaded I did the Fn/F7 key combo....it worked. Really cool of you to mention this. I had the feeling it was something simple to resolve but without knowledge even the simplest things are out of reash:))

I am running Win2K
I did some searching and found the driver at http://ftp.jp.dell.com/video/. The driver is W2KAO7.EXE ATI Mobility 3 / Mobility 4 Driver, Windows 2000, Multi Language, Multi System, v. M6.56.3-T01, A07. Is this a mobility 3 and/or mobility 4 powered notebook?

On another search I found something about a bios update http://www.bay-wolf....os/I8000A17.TXT the first section on the page. I don't know much about BIOS updating and I am not even sure it applies to this Latitude C600 machine.
Can a bios update be downloaded to a disc and run through the cd drive?

On the issue of changing resolution I only have the 640X480 and the 800X600 option now. I meant that there isn't the option for higher resolution, I assumed this screen is better at higher resolutions. But I don't know for sure. Someone suggested I dl the video drivers here http://ati.amd.com/s.../legacy-2k.html amd install but the system rejected the driver saying that it was incompatible with the hardware in the system.
Let me know what you think about the BIOS and installing the W2KAO7.EXE driver w/or w/out the bios update.

I really want to thank you for your help on this. The suggestion to get to full screen gave me some hope and sanity:)

[The Admiral]

Yes, that video driver should work - your laptop's GPU is a mobility 4 (probably). If not, it's the mobility 3.
Don't worry about the BIOS - you'll need to find another way to flash the BIOS, since we won't be able to do it in Windows 2000.

[Norgermish]

Ok video problem fixed, I now have full screen and working ATI video card:))
Do you have any sugesstions on ethernet drivers for this computer? device manager shows ethernet controllers and PCI Simple Communications Controller with the yellow question mark. I assume it is driver problem. I have searched and searched...there are sites that will dl a program onto computer, and upload necessary missing or outdated drivers. My problem is I cannot connect with out the driver for ethernet. ....Catch 22:)))
Can't seem to pull it off my Win 2000 CD either.
Thanks for the help with the video problem, my daughter will be happy too.
Paul

[The Admiral]

haha frankly, the C600 doesn't have any Win 2000 drivers, as you saw. If you can find a driver for the 3Com® 3CN3AC1556 10/100 LAN + 3COM 56K Global Modem Type IIIA Mini PCI Card, that'll take care of the ethernet driver and the PCI Simple Communications Controller (Modem).

[Norgermish]

ok I'll find it. Thanks for your help.
Take care,
paul