Lost display settings

[NeilP]

Windows 10  64 bit.  Put my laptop into sleep mode and the next day when it activated the display had a black band either side of the active window suggesting an aspect ratio issue. I can't remember what I did to clear it but now the display seems stuck in some sort of weird aspect ratio. Everything is stretched and too big.

I've noticed I don't have any advanced display settings option now too and all I can change is 1024 x 78 or 800 x 600 in screen resolution.

I've run the update driver option for graphics etc but no joy. I suspect a recent update but can't be sure.

Any ideas?

[Kim]

Resolution tied to that of a non-existent external display device, so falling back to bog standard VGA?  There's usually a hotkey (<Fn><F5> or similar) combination to toggle the between various combinations of internal and external displays.

Or, as you suggest, completely broken graphics drivers for some reason.

[Feanor]

Sounds to me like you don't have the proper video driver running, and it's fallen back on some lame default VGA driver.

Go into device manager and look at the Display Adapters node.
I expect you will find something banged out.

I'd simply remove any banged-out display adapters, reboot, and let it re-detect the hardware.
With any luck, it will pick up the correct driver and all will be well.

If that fails, then I'd be looking at going to the hardware manufacturer's website and explicitly downloading the relevant display driver and then installing it.

[NeilP]

Thanks for that. Currently doing a system restore to see what happens. If that doesn't work I'll try your options.

[NeilP]

All sorted. System restore worked. I could see that all of the display adaptor properties were saying unavailable and now they are all there again plus I have a choice of about 7 or 8 screen resolutions.