Manually adjusting Widescreen LCD resolution?

Question

I recenlty purchased a Vista notebook, that has a widescreen display. Most of my older programs run, but naturally, some of the especially old ones, have no resolution setting for widescreen displays, so everything is stretched, and I cannot adjust the ratio.

I have a theory, of getting a hex editor and screwing around with the tags and fudging the display so that when I check the highest resolution, it will display in the one i manually entered in the codes--

Before I risk corrupting something, however, I was wondering if there were a way to get my widescreen monitor to display a smaller, standard ratio (with some black on the sides) in order to make my stretched applications, appear normal?

~Just to clarify, for example what i am thinking, if any of you have a portable DVD player, there is usually a button that will switch the little monitor between display modes, like 16:9/4:3... now of course there is no switch on my laptop, but I was wondering if i could mimic the effect.

I do not mean to adjust the desktop resolution itself, because doing that will only suit to keep my actual desktop and aplications just as stretched out as my games are appearing.

I meant, perhaps, adjusting the actual physical display area of the monitor to 1024x768, so games can display in their native ratio without "stretching" the image sideways to fit my widescreen monitor, which is set to 1280X800, and as such has a different aspect ratio than the games have.

Answer 1

I doubt it, most laptop screens automatically stretch the image to fill the screen.

If your programs are running in individual windows then just do not maximise the window. If you set the window to a 4:3 aspect ratio, then the image within it will be 4:3.

Answer 2

right click anywhere on desktop and click properties and go to settings and adjust ur resloution