Why does my laptop screen only display a 16 color 400 x 300 size screen? ?

Question

I have an older Dell Inspiron laptop that i just put a new hard drive in cuz my brother gave it to me saying it had a bad hard drive. Now it boots up fine and everything but the screen is half the size it should be and the graphics/colors aren't very good at all. Is there some graphics drivers i need to install or something? Or do i need to buy an operating system disk or something?

Answer 1

No operating system needed.  Your problem is two things.

1.)  You'll need to right click on the desktop, choose Properties, go to Settings, Click on the drop down "Color Quality" if you don't have anything else listed besides 16 color your problem is your graphics card.  

Solution:  Upgrade your graphics card

or

Solution 2:  Download Driver Detective (It's free) and see if it detects any driver upgrades for your graphics card.

Also while your in Properties, See if your slider bar will let you slide it to the right a little so that you can make the screen smaller.  If this doesn't work it's your graphics card.

Answer 2

Lookslike that you missing some vudeo drivers, you can downloand them from the dell according to the type of your notebook

Answer 3

Since you have put in a new hard drive, you must have reinstaall the operating system....and in doing so, you have to install all the drivers for the lap top...

If you have a recovery disk - the drivers will all be installed and the system configured to the default.   If not, i.e. if you used a system install disk, you need to find and install them, according the the system (Windows ? Linux ? )...  For lack of model number,   that is all I can help....except to advise that you contact Dell ....