Member Avatar for d2legitgod

Hey there im using a new computer with a 22inch CHIMEI 5ms gaming monitor and i am wanting to play one of my older games Diablo II but when i play the 800x600 resolution from the game stretches over the whole screen and makes it distorted.

On my other computer (Powermac G5) i can play Diablo 2 on my 23 inch and it automatically makes side bars on both sides so the game is not stretched, how can i do this on my pc?

My computer specs are:
Intel core duo 2.13Ghz
2Gb low latency high clocking RAM (not sure wat its called)
nvidia Geforce 7950 512GDDR3 memory

please help me to fix this problem so I can happily play this game again

Regards
d2legitgod

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Dani AI

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This is a classic 4:3-vs-16:9 scaling issue that shows up when an older fullscreen game runs on a widescreen panel. described the symptom and earlier replies from and pointed at basic resolution fiddling and drivers — good starting ideas, but the solution is a few precise settings away.

At a high level: the image can be scaled by the monitor or by the GPU driver. If the scaler is set to “fill” the screen, a 4:3 picture will be stretched horizontally. The reliable fixes are to force the scaler to preserve the original proportions, or to run the game in a window (or via a wrapper) so black bars appear instead of stretching.

Practical steps (try in order):

  • Open the graphics control panel and look for display/desktop sizing or scaling controls. Change the scaling mode so the image keeps its aspect ratio and, if available, choose the GPU as the device that performs scaling. Enable any option that forces this behavior for full‑screen apps.
  • Check the monitor OSD for scaling names like Aspect/Keep Aspect/1:1/Dot‑by‑dot and select the mode that preserves proportions (or disables automatic stretching).
  • If using an analog cable (VGA), try a digital connection (DVI/HDMI) — monitors sometimes handle analog inputs differently.
  • If the driver control lacks scaling options, test a different driver release (newer or older) but create a system restore point first; driver UIs can add/remove these controls across versions.
  • If none of the above works, use a windowing/wrapper tool that forces the game into a centered window with black bars (common workaround for classic DirectX titles).

Caution: changing drivers can affect system stability. Back up current drivers or create a restore point before installing or rolling back. The steps above resolve this problem in most cases without hardware changes.

Member Avatar for DemonicGoldfish

Pretty good rig there mate :)

I'm not sure how to do this, I'm happy to have my games slightly stretched... Try changing your monitor resolution when you play, if you can... Sorry I can't help you more.

Member Avatar for d2legitgod

thx for the tip but none of it works, this problem seems to be very advance as i have browsed other forums as well and only few seem to have over come this problem and they are not very good at explaining how they did it or they have a different system

Member Avatar for Spartacus626

thx for the tip but none of it works, this problem seems to be very advance as i have browsed other forums as well and only few seem to have over come this problem and they are not very good at explaining how they did it or they have a different system

Not too shabby a rig indeed, excep for the nvidia card *shudders* personally, I am running A radeon X1950 on a Pentium 4D Extreme @ 3.0 Gig. Using a 20" Widescreen Samsung 206BW, 2ms GTG response, perfect for gaming.

Anyhow, backt o your problem. It is probably a driver issue with your vid card. In the Version 6x drivers there is a tab missing. You should be able to set your card to use 'fixed aspect ratio' which will letterbox any 4:3 programs accordingly.

Member Avatar for d2legitgod

Thx for the response ill look into updating my drivers

Member Avatar for Spartacus626

Updating may or may not help. It's the newer drivers that tend to have problems. You may need to roll them back to fix the problem.

Member Avatar for d2legitgod

I had a read of a thread outside of this website. Apparently the driver update 91,31 fixes the problem but I’m not sure to do it or not because I’m starting to get used to it now.

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