Hello everyone, and welcome to another tech-tip.
Today we will be talking about the Resolution problem that occur with Netbook while trying to run some programs.
OS: XP SP3, Netbook type HP Compaq CQ10-100

 

I was not able to find anything useful on this issue so I decided to work it out myself, and this is what I have found:

First of all lets see the error message that comes when this problem happens:

Your system does not meet the minimum requirements for Handbrake.

Your Screen is running at: 1024×600

Screen resolution is too low. Must be 1024×620 or greater.

Cause of the issue

The cause of this problem is that the program cannot run under the Netbook’s resolution, in this case is 1024×600.

You can’t change the resolution because the Intel graphic chipset installed in the Netbook does not support larger resolutions.

Some of the applications that had this problem on my Netbook:

The common thing among these software and games that they are all licensed as Open source, it happened with one Freeware: “dspeech”, but why it targets Open source, this I don’t know (maybe because of OpenGL?).

Now we got two very simple fixes for this problem:

The First Fix

  • Connect your mini computer to a monitor, then change the computer’s resolution to a larger resolution, for example 1024×724, and then when the computer asks you to restart, Restart.
  • Use the function keys to alter between the آetbook monitor and the other monitor, on my Netbook for example is Fn+F2.

The Second Fix

  • Download the following Freeware, less than 100k (NRC10Beta2 Netbook Resolution Customizer) from here, and run it (on some computers it may trigger an antiviurs alarm, but it’s clean).
  • You will find an icon in the tray area (small orange monitor).
  • Right click the icon and click the top choice (which is your current resolution) to display a list of resolutions, and then click the bottom checkbox to the left saying: Enable Downscaling then click OK.
  • Repeat the last step to have the resolution you want, and the scaling means you can’t see the whole screen at once, you must move the mouse at the top and the bottom of the screen to see the rest of it.
  • The resolution will remain until you restart the Netbook, exiting the program will not change it back, a simple restart will put things right on track.
  • So this was today’s tip, we learned how to overcome the disadvantage of the small Netbook screen, for any comments please post below, I will be delighted to answer an questions regarding the matter.
Have a lovely day.