Laptop won't go full screen !!!

[unstopabl3]

Yea my laptop was acting kinda sluggish so i had a clean install after a format. Now i can't get it to go full screen completely while playing anything i.e UTD, movies, clips etc. Mayb you guys should take a look at these shots




You see how theres black bars at the sides of the shots ? That's how my full screen looks like. I have installed the latest ati mobility radeon x1400 drivers and installed all the drivers which came with the laptop. First i thought i had a windows installment issue, i re-installed still the same problem. I am 100% sure i have everything similar to what i had before the first format/reinstall then why won't it work !!! Here are my laptop specs, i hope someone can help me out as i am very frustrated !!!

Computer:
    Dell Inspiron 6400  
   Operating System   Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition  
   OS Service Pack   Service Pack 2  
   DirectX   4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)  
   Computer Name   VXDESIGN-0304B9  
   User Name   VoodooX  
  
  Motherboard:  
   CPU Type   Mobile DualCore Intel Pentium M, 1666 MHz (10 x 167)  
   Motherboard Name   Dell MM061  
   Motherboard Chipset   Intel Calistoga i945GM/PM  
   System Memory   1024 MB (DDR2-533 DDR2 SDRAM)  
   BIOS Type   Phoenix (04/20/06)  
  
  Display:  
   Video Adapter   ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 (Omega 3.8.273) (256 MB)  
   Video Adapter   ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 (Omega 3.8.273) (256 MB)  
   Monitor   Generic Television  
   Monitor   Plug and Play Monitor [NoDB]

[Rob Pomeroy]

That's a widescreen laptop, isn't it?  You need to set your Windows and game resolutions to something that your laptop screen can cope with natively.  Possibly 1280x800 will work?  Try it.

[unstopabl3]

Yes i have tried both, yet no luck. But everything worked fine before the format and re-install, that's the weird part, and i have installed everything similar as before. I did a research of my own and from what i gathered is that the screen is not refreshing properly to change the resolution, why i say that is because before it used to have 1 sec black screen delay whenever i ran a full screen app/game and now there is none. Do you guys think it's a video card problem ? Although i ran the dell diagnostic tests and it says all hardware passed the tests. Is there any utility which can scan my video card or hardware and tell me if it's malfunctioning on not ?

[Neil]

Do you mean you get black borders around the image in your screen? Yet no luck... what happened? It sounds to me as if your computer is not stretching the display the fit the whole monitor. This is a "feature" on some laptops that may or may not be useful. I'm not sure how to alter it though. If you're using ATI try looking in the Catalyst Control Center.

[GX1_Man]

You are not using the Dell display drivers? That could be part of the problem. Laptops=proprietary.