Windows 7: Setting background on laptop

I'm sure there is an easy fix to this.

When I select any saved pic and set is as background, the image is greatly magnified and the entire screen is fill with a close-up partial view of said pic.

Happens no matter what pic I select.

No other anamolies noted.

This just now started happening.

I have made no changes in any settings.

Bueller?
Bueller?
Bueller?

hi trojwl, and welcome to sevenforums,

check your 'picture position' settings. right-click desktop >> personalise >> desktop background

yours seems to be set to 'fill' or 'stretch', which will make the picture fill the screen.



it depends on the shape of your desktop, and the image too - imagine trying to fill a rectangle desktop with a square picture. you're either going to have to chop things off (fill), have black bars (fit), stretch and distort the square into a rectangle etc etc

How does your screen look otherwise? Are you using the native resolution for the screen?

If it was as simple as "unstretching" the settings, I would not need this forum.

It's like you took a small piece of the pic and blew it up to where it covers the whole screen. There is no stretching to fit at all. Everything is in proportion.
And it covers entire screen (16x9 aspect ratio).

Also when I try pics taken with older camera (i.e. 500-700 KB) the magnification is not as much. When I try a pic from newer camera (3-4 MB), the magnification is much greater.

In other words, if I used a pic of dog sitting on porch for desktop background, a pic taken with older camera would show just his head and a pic with newer camera would show just his nose. There is no "stretching".

Apparently the size of the pic affects the degree of magnification.

Spend some time here before you cop an attitude about the questions you are asked. You'll see we get a very large range of questions from experts and people new to their computers. When in doubt, you always start from the beginning.

You are right. Won't happen again.

Use a free software re-sizer like FastStone Image Viewer, Screen Capture, Photo Resizer ...
Select the dog sitting on the porch and re-size it to your fancy and save it.
Then locate it and right click on it and select it as background.

Post back if more help is needed.
THW

Just remember not to take offense if we ask a follow-up question (even if it sounds dumb or noob-ish). This forum has the entire range of users, so anything is possible. I wasn't asking to belittle you...it was just to knock out the easy solution so if that wasn't it...we could move on to others.

Going by what you said, it definitely sounds like something is causing the photo to show in "actual pixels" as opposed to sized appropriately for your screen. Again, I'm just guessing here, but are you using the latest video drivers? If so, check to see if your computer is set to think there's a second display....maybe the photo is being stretched out across your display, as if you were extending your desktop. Some laptops have hotkeys for this, others have it in their video driver settings.

It looks to me like the "setting background display" function will only allow a limited number of pixels in the display. Thus a denser pic (4 MB) would end up being highly "magnified". The less dense pics (700 KB) show a lot more of the pic in the background display.

This only happens when setting background. Otherwise pics look OK. Somewhere there is a setting for this. I just need to find it.

I don't think resizing pics is the answer. I'd be treating a symptom and not the disease.

Also, there is no stretching of the pics at all.

And this just started happening recently. I've done this a million times and never seen this happen before.

trojwl,
Have you download something or done something recently to your computer?
You may try restoring it back to when it was working correctly.
You don't quit as we won't quit until your problem is resolved so hang in there.
THW