My laptop screen now stretches horizontally when running games

[againagain]

Native resolution is 1366x768, so up until now when I ran games that only allowed 4:3 resolutions, black bars appeared on the sides of the screen to fit the proper ratio; circles were circles, everything was good and well. But since a few days ago, whenever I run a game that is set for example to 1024x768, the image is completely stretched to the sides of the screen creating a pretty horrible look, with circles becoming ovals and such. It stays like this no matter how many times I change the desktop resolution or the one inside the games.

Laptop is Toshiba Satellite L505
Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4500
Screen: Samsung 156AT01-U01
OS: Windows 7 64bit

Other things I tried: fiddling around with the Screen section of the control panel (no related options apparently), alternating between the laptop's three zoom settings (Function+Spacebar), reverting to older ATI drivers, updating to newer drivers, looking for new options in ATI's Catalyst Control Center (or attempting to, since it won't even let me install Catalyst for some reason), hit F2 during boot to see what I could change about the display (it was a single, unrelated option... yay), fiddle a bit with the checkmarks on Properties->Compatibility->Config on each game's shortcut... Nothing at all. I think the change happened after an automatic Windows update; I just disabled those now but they were enabled until a couple days ago. Also installed Avast antivirus about that time...


How can I get my black bars and proper ratio back? >':

[Caleb Watson]

That is a really strange problem...
Have you tried looking up the problem on Google to see if there is anyone else with the same issue.
That is the first thing I would try after messing with the settings.

[againagain]

That is a really strange problem...
Have you tried looking up the problem on Google to see if there is anyone else with the same issue.
That is the first thing I would try after messing with the settings.

It's the first thing I tried before messing with the settings lol. Seems like it's happened to a couple people, but with a twist: they wanted the 4:3 stretched to fill the whole screen in an improper ratio, but had the black bars. That's where I got most of the ideas; the ATI Catalyst Control Center seems to have a control for this, but it won't allow me to install... All the odds are against it seems

[8ftmetalhaed]

disable gpu scaling perhaps? (in flat screen display settings, i believe)

[againagain]

disable gpu scaling perhaps? (in flat screen display settings, i believe)

Where can I do this? If it's in Catalyst, it won't let me install that tool as said earlier

[8ftmetalhaed]

oh yeah it is.
What's the install error/problem in installing it?

[Agent_24]

I think you will find the setting either in your video card drivers or in your BIOS setup.

Try removing the video drivers completely with drivercleaner or driversweeper, then reinstalling the latest ones.

Note: To run Catalyst, you need .Net framework installed and probably C++ runtimes as well.

[jareemon]

I think you will find the setting either in your video card drivers or in your BIOS setup.

Try removing the video drivers completely with drivercleaner or driversweeper, then reinstalling the latest ones.

Note: To run Catalyst, you need .Net framework installed and probably C++ runtimes as well.

+1, It could have been a gpu driver auto update, maybe try rolling back. if the problem is resolved, then you know it's the new drivers/updates causing it.

[Agent_24]

An update may have changed the setting but it shouldn't remove the option to change the setting manually.

[againagain]

oh yeah it is.
What's the install error/problem in installing it?

The installer launches (I made sure it's the one for Win7 64), I get to choose path, language, it extracts the files, and as soon as I click "Install" to start the install proper, the classic windows crash happens which allows you to close it

"CATALYST(tm) Install Manager stopped working"

-Details- (translated as best as I could)
Problem event name: APPCRASH
Application name: InstallManagerApp.exe
App version: 3.0.736.0
App timestamp: 4a5d3015
Module with errors name: MFC80U.DLL
Module with errors version: 8.0.50727.1833
Module with errors timestamp: 482bb4a2
Exception code: c0000005
Exception displacement: 00000000000854ee
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
Regional config ID: 3082
Additional info 1: 2a81
Additional info 2: 2a81cbaea89bd5754e854ae615f08673
Additional info 3: ac8a
Additional info 4: ac8a106f63e08dd2e706339329ed5ab4

Going to try the drivers now, although I seem to recall there was some trouble there too