Laptop and Game issues with Win7

Hope I am posting in the correct forum...
I bought a cheap Toshiba laptop for my daughter, A Satellite L455 with a ATI Radeon 3100 in it. Her games will not display in a full screen. They just display in a tiny window in the center of the screen. These games displayed fine on a Vista desktop we have.
I have tried the following:
- Used compatibility mode - this had no effect
- Updated ATI drivers - again no effect
- Hooked it up to an external monitor. This worked sometimes... other time it didn't. Also when she closes the lid sometimes that made the output to the monitor quit
- The OS is up to date with patches.
- Checked Toshiba's web site - nothing
- Checked the game's web site - nothing
- Checked the game settings - nothing for video output there

These are silly kid's games, nothing resource intensive.
I am thinking of downgrading to XP... but that would be a PITA and I am not sure that would even work.

What else can I try?
Thanks

ok the easy answer here is for the closing the lid problem, go into power settings and you will see an option for lid close action. The more difficult one of the small picture in the center of the screen is probably fixable from how the screen scales in your graphics card options. I use nvidia so i cant supply you with a snip of how to fix it, sorry.

EDIT: ok i will show the nvidia control panel snip, maybe you will find your ATI alternative.