Mepis Desktop Does Not Occupy The Full Monitor Screen

world, if you are not dual-booting your system then just adjust the monitor. I have seen on some older systems and monitors that the OS graphic software will skew the image in size or position. On some flat-panel displays the booting OS doesn't even work (I don't know why). But try fiddling with the monitor's manual adjustments and make things bigger and position them properly.

If you had to use multiple OSes then this wouldn't necessarily work, 'cause any changes would of course affect each OS.

Jon

If one of your monitor adjustments is allready cranked up to max and your still getting black borders 3 things can be attempted.

#1 select your monitor in the Os control center under the mouse and display tab. Mind you this may cause your system to fail on reeboot if it does use the live cd to restore your Xf86config its one of the options in install icon from the live cd "no harm done".

#2 use the xvidtune utility in the menu category "all applications /apps/system/ xvidtune". Use this with discretion and small increments at a time. As it may or may not damage your monitor. It never has mine but things happen."

#3 this is not going to make your day. log into a terminal session as root, and type xf86config and youll be taken to a text based setup utility enter the specific values set for your monitor and other hardware. If you are not sure what the values are look either on the back of the monitor or the maunfacturers website 1st to get the specifics for your monitor "vert and horizantal refresh rates" . Pray to Linus Torvalds and hope it reboots to a GUI.

If not, follow the steps I desrcibed above to reinstall the xfconfig from the live cd. Personally the xvidtune utility usually is a quick fix for those somewhat annoying black borders. but try step's 1 and 3, 1st as this may not be necessary for you after make the changes.

Hope that works out for you......

Thank you Jon, and Masumane for your suggestions. I will try them.
I wanted to add a couple of additional observations.
1.) When Mepis goes through the boot sequence before the GUI starts, the full screen is used. Only when the "wristwatch" appears prior to login does the failure to use the full screen occur.
2.)I have booted Knoppix from the Live CD and unlike Mepis, the Knoppix desktop uses the full monitor screen.

This suggests that the Mepis video driver is different from the one that the Live CD Knoppix distro uses.

Thanks to your helpful suggestions Jon and Masumane, I got rid of the black borders. Here is how. First, I dug into my collection of obsolete manuals which I had squirreled away, and found a 148 page Dell D1226H Digital AutoScan Colour Monitor User's Guide Circa 1997.
This User's guide, (printed, by the way in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese with additional appendices in Dansk, Norsk, Svenska, and Suomi)explains how to use the on-screen digital programming mode to control every detail of the display including size and position using the on-screen programning facility. I was able to program the Mepis desktop to use the full monitor screen, just as you both suggested. The interesting thing is that I am using a KVM switch to share my monitor, mouse, and keyboard with another machine that runs Windows98 SE and even though I adjusted the monitor for Mepis, for some reason this had no effect whatsoever on the Windows98 machine's display, which remained unchanged in anyway by the settings changed for Mepis.
Thanks again for your help!

Geeze world, you beat me to it. Reading that manual was going to be my next suggestion

Actually, that sounds like a pretty cool pile-o-paper. Care to scan it in and store it?

I'm just glad you were able to get it configured correctly. I too use a KVM switch and (used to have) a Windows 98 box that connected to the monitor along with a SuSE Linux system. And you're right, I had to make some minor size/location adjustments in SuSE but that had no impact on Windows. I don't know why

Jon

Jon,
The following link:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/monitors/59119/OSD.htm?c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs
Explains how to adjust the Dell 19 inch Dell AutoScan Color Monitors to eliminate the black bars appearing in the Mepis desktop
The entire 148 page D1226H Color Monitor Dell Manual is available on the above website.

I'm sure it will come in handy

Jon