Apple 15" PowerBook G4 Aluminum 1.67 GHz LCD Display (p/n 1002587) (661-3749 1002587) Mac Notebook Logo
Posted on Sep 19, 2008

Display size / resolution

I have a G4 17" but i don't think it should matter.  What the problem is during initial boot up the display size is perfect 1440x900 - and everything fits on the screen ie. the top left side has the APPLE logo and the top right hand side has SPOTLIGHT - and also the DOCK all fits.  But at the end of the boot up - the LCD displays changes resolution so now the virtual screen is larger than my physical screen.  I have seen this in Windows and I have been able to fix it but I can not find how I can fix this resolution display size back to the original.  ie. that I can see the whole virtual screen on my display.  I hope that makes sense and pray that someone can tell me.  I have tried going into sys pref and performed a detect display and played around with the settings there but no result the virtual screen is still larger than the physical screen.  Sorry for the longish desc.  thanks in advance.  Perth guy.

  • Anonymous May 11, 2010

    Hi ya.
    No matter what the res of the screen is it should still display your top menu etc.

    So after the machine is up and running your nav and doc disappear?
    Are you able to see anything? Does the doc magnify when you mouse down at the bottom of the screen?

    You've been to display pref' and changing res does nothing?
    Do you have access to another monitor that you can plug into your machine.

    If you can do that open display panel and look under arrangement. You should see tow screens. One with a red line around it. Try dragging that over the second monitor or switch on mirroring to see if the apple menu appears.

    That would be the first try before re-installing software.


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  • Posted on Sep 27, 2008
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Just gonna toss out a couple of questions here: 1) what do your startup items contain? since login and bootup sequence finishes completely (i.e., you see a dock and top menu), this sounds like a startup procedure kicking in. i'd look at startup items in your /Library and ~/Library directories, as well as maybe even /System/Library/StartupItems. something is resizing your monitor upon startup but only after full login and bootup. 2) Assuming the problem hasn't always existed, can you time it to a particular period of time? have you tried going into ~/Library/Preferences and viewing by modification date and pulling out a modified .plist file that would have to do with your screen resolution or virtualization of your screen, even just the standard com.apple.display.plist type stuff?

hope that helps!
Bill

A

Anonymous

Hi thanks for this but no to no avail. There is nothing wrong with the display itself - everything works but the problem is that the VIRTUAL size of the screen is 1500 x 950 instead of 1440 x 900 if you get my meaning. I wish i could find a way to shrink back the virtual screen size to 1440 x 900 so that it fits the exact physical screen. ie. if i was to play a DVD on full screen i would only see 95% of the picture because the virtual screen is larger than the display. And the virtual screen would move right if I shifted my mouse to the right edge. Still puzzled.

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