switching resolution on laptop

[darth vader]

I have just installed Windows XP on a recently acquired Dell Precision, which has a NVidia Quadro4 70GoGL graphics card. Everything works OK and it runs in 1600/1200 mode fine. This is hard for my eyesight though, so would like to knock down to 1024/768. Only thing is when i set this in control panel, display, the screen size scales down, rather than using the whole width of the displayable area of the laptop's screen, so the size of the icons/fonts stay the same and i am just looking at a smaller visible area. How do i set it to 1024/768 and have it use the maximum allowable width please? thanks in advance

[vehelpfulguy]

Many laptops require special drivers to be installed after the operating system has been installed. You may need to install the graphics drivers.

Either install from the CD that came with the laptop, or if not try to download the drivers from the web.

[darth vader]

installed the latest driver for this laptop from Dell website. to cut a long story short, this laptop was borrowed from work. when i got it i could switch between resolutions no problem - but previous owner made it riddled with viruses - so i formatted the hard drive and installed XP + latest drivers from dell. now i can't switch resolutinos (ok i CAN but the resolution doesn't change, just the screen size).

btw appreciate the very quick return on question!

[tomd]

Laptop's LCD screens aren't like CRT monitors, in that they have a 'native' resolution, and may not display any others with the same detail / clarity.

Why not just change the font size?

[darth vader]

i'll have some fun on the driverguide.com and see if i can get different drivers to work. thanks for the input