Q. I recently bought a laptop with a wide-screen display. When I run certain programs on it, games in particular, the content of the display is squashed vertically or stretched horizontally. How do I cause the display to be standard, non-wide-screen dimensions, with black bars on the left and right?
Jim Fentress @excite.com
A. There are two things you need to know, and then your games once again should play on the square, Mr. F.
First of all, wide-screen monitors built into laptops, or those attached to desktops, use a default aspect ratio of about 16 units wide by 9 tall, called letterbox mode.
But a great many programs and machines use the much more square 4:3 aspect ratio. The squashing, of course, comes as the laptop tries to fit those 4:3 games onto its 16:9 screen, but a lot of games can be set to force the computer to play them in a more-square window simply by changing the properties settings.
To do that, find the icon for your game and give it a right-click and select Properties from the menu that pops up. In the menu this produces, select the tab marked Compatibility. This brings up a set of check boxes that lets you force the computer to play that program in a 640-by-480 dots-per-inch resolution instead of the wide-screen resolutions that are far larger, along the lines of 1600 x 1050 d.p.i.
Most games will play correctly with this setting change, but there are some games and other programs that should be run at a slightly higher resolution of 800 x 600 d.p.i. If you find that’s the case, you can temporarily reset the computer’s resolution by right-clicking with the cursor on the desktop and picking Properties and then Settings from the menus that appear. In the Settings display you will find a slider bar that can be moved from the lowest possible resolution on the left to the highest possible on the right.
Q. I shall be grateful if you can help me rectify/eliminate an irritating notation that crops up on each and every one of the “saved” files in the Microsoft Word program. Whenever I open any saved files, I get the following:
“C:
… Bir (or any other name)
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MK (or any other name).doc is being used by SB,( the registered owner). Do you want to make a copy?” Then it says “OK or Cancel.” I can get rid of this notation by clicking on Cancel.
Bir Inder Singh @sbcglobal.net
A. Somehow your copy of Microsoft Word has been altered to make it work as a tool for document collaboration among several colleagues instead of just creating files for a single user. So the fix is a cakewalk. I like fixes that are cakewalks, don’t you?
Anyway, click on Tools in the Word display and then open the item called Options at the end of the drop-down menu that appears.
Open the Security tab in the next menu. Look for the check box labeled “Warn before printing, saving or sending a file that contains tracked changes.” Remove the check mark, and the problem will go away.
Q. Suddenly I’m getting garbled sound on my collection of enhanced CDs that I used to play on my Windows XP computer using Apple’s QuickTime software. I have an 18-month-old Dell PC that until about six to eight months ago could play this enhanced content fine.
I uninstalled QuickTime and reinstalled it. Still no help. I searched Apple’s database and couldn’t find an answer. They have no QT customer support. I found a QT message board where others had same problem. The only solutions posted were the horrendous “reinstall Windows,” which I don’t want to do. I have lots of CDs with enhanced content that I can’t enjoy. Any ideas?
Steve Ramm, Philadelphia
A. The Windows version of Apple’s QuickTime media player uses its own Control Panel to manage its settings and to communicate with the Windows operating systems in order to make it all work on non-Apple hardware, and therein lies your fix, Mr. S. No matter how many times you uninstall and reinstall the Apple software, it won’t fix the Windows settings causing the sound to become corrupted. So you need to open the QT control panel first. Click on Start and then Control Panel and then double-click on the icon with the blue QuickTime “Q.”
In the QT menu, select the Sound Out item from the drop-down list and make sure that your computer’s sound card is selected instead of Direct Sound or any other option. Then shut the QT control panel and move down to the Windows control panel for Sounds and Audio Devices and open it. Select the tab for Audio and open the button for Sound Playback.
In the menu that summons, open the tab for Advanced and you will find a slider bar for Hardware Acceleration. Make sure the playback device listed is the same one as in your QT control panel.
Now all you need to do is to move the slider either toward Full or Off until you find the proper adjustment that irons out the sound when you play those special CDs designed to show pictures, animations and Web sites as well as play their audio content.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or via snail mail at the baiduhai, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/askjim.