strange screen happenings

i have been given a compaq armada 1590dt laptop with win 98 installed but i have a problem regarding the screen resolution.

basically i get a 1 inch black border around the edge of the screen. i have tried changing the screen resolution but i only have one option ( 640x480 ) and cannot change it to anything else

i'll try and give as much info as possible.

its quite an old laptop p166 i think, 48MB RAM.

in device manager..
display adapters = Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA)
monitors = Laptop Display Panel (800x600)
-and using MSDISP.INF as the driver

i have also tried using the (640x480) and (1024X768) monitor options (displayProperties > advanced > monitors...)

when i run dxdiag on the display tab i get these errors:
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1.
DxDiag has detected that there may have been problems accessing DirectDraw the last time this program was used. Would you like to bypass DirectDraw this time?
[yes][no]
-----
i click "no"
----
2.
You must be running in 256 color mode or higher.
you can change the color depth from the control panel display icon.
[ok]
----
i cant change it from the display icon - i have the choice of 2bit or 16bit.
i click ok
---
3.
Error: Problem getting extra display info, result code = 0x887600de (No DirectDraw support)
[ok]
---
i click ok. - there was an error similar to this on the microsoft knowledge base that told me to plug another monitor into the computer. this had no effect.
---

the system is using dx6.1a - would it be an idea to update this, i'd rather not if possible, but as far as i am aware it is not possible to undo a directx instalation (may be wrong here)

hope this makes some sense to someone. If possible i would like to resolve the problem without having to reinstall anything.

Oh... i havent yet figured out how to get into the bios (im sure it is usuallg f10 on compaqs but no luck) - the one thing that looks odd to me is that it says it is using a PCI graphics card, i kind of assumed it would be onboard but dont know why i assumed that. -> from display properties i tried changing the adapter from StandardPCI Graphics Adapter (vga) to Standard Display Adapter (vga) but an error message came up telling me that this was not recommended and could stop everything working correctly, which scared me!! (so i didnt)

thanks

Not sure if you have this info, but it sounds like you need new drivers for your video. If you know what sort of video hardware you have, try getting the latest drivers from the manufacturer. Also, try getting the latest (or at least a later) version of directX.

aah. all sorted. it was as simple as a driver update but it turned out the driver i had was probably corrupt or something. downloaded the new one today and everything is fine.