Tuesday, March 26, 2013

SOLUTION: Black Borders Around Screen on Dell S2440L Monitor

I just bought a Dell S2440L Monitor , and was initially surprised (and a little apprehensive) when I unpacked it to discover that it only had VGA and HDMI ports, no DVI. (I'd previously had some bad experiences with HDMI-only connections on PCs.)

Anyway, my fears seemed confirmed when I logged into Windows for the first time with the S2440L connected. While my screen resolution was correct (1920x1080), there was a large black border around the viewable portion of my screen; the Windows desktop did not fill the whole screen.

I could not find any settings in the monitor's own menu options that made any difference, and changing refresh rates had no positive effects.

I should note that I have an ATI Radeon HD 5700 series graphics card and, and I eventually stumbled across a poorly documented feature of the ATI software that was causing the problem. Here's how to fix it on Windows 7:
  1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Display.
  2. Click Adjust Resolution, then click Advanced Settings.
  3. On the Catalyst Control Center tab, click Catalyst Control Center. After a while, the Catalyst Control Center dialog should appear.
  4. On the left side of the dialog, click My Digital Flat-Panels, and then click Scaling Options (Digital Flat-Panel).
  5. On my computer, the Scaling Options slider was set somewhere in the middle. Slide it all the way to the right (the "Overscan" direction), to 0%. You should see an immediate change.
  6. Click Apply, and then close the Control Center.
UPDATE: I recently bought a Dell S2415H monitor and discovered I had exactly the same issue with it as my S2440L. I actually did a web search for my own blog post to remember how to fix it.

4 comments:

Sam Greene said...

Thanks - got me fixed up.

Jason said...

+1 thanks!

Emiliano Carlevaro said...

Thanks man! I was very sad because I have just bought a new HDMI cable and the I saw that ugly black border WTF?.
Thanks again!

ChatWithMike.Com said...

Exactly the solution! THANK YOU!