I'm having a very frustrating problem with my laptop. For games where there is no option to select the resolution, I can not scale up a 4:3 image on my 16:9 screen.
I have a max resolution of 1680x1050. I use 1400x1050. Some games have support for that resolution, but others do not and they just use 640x480 pixels in the center of my screen.
There is an option to "scale image to panel" but that will take the 640x480 image (4:3) and scale it up to the max 1680x1050 (16:9), not the 1400x1050 (4:3) that I have selected and will stretch my images.
I have goggled this to death. ATI doesn't have a fix for this for my 9600 Radeon. I have found Omega drivers from omegadrivers.net, but they don't help either. The small images keep getting scaled up to 1680x1050.
Has anyone had luck with this?
"You want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?" --Toby, West Wing
It will always depend on the combination of devices. For example, most 16:9 TVs will scale 4:3 to full screen by either zooming in (and cutting off part of the picture) or stretching it. But the latter gives you slight distortion (especially with talking heads.)
As far as computers go, you just get even more complex.
This is just something we'll have to deal with the next few years until we get to the 16:9 standard and 4:3 finally dies off.
I'm not sure what if this is very helpful or not, but the only program that I can think of is PowerStrip, but I only use it to display 16:9 to my 4:3 projector.
There are programs you can use to try and retrieve the data, yes. Can't think of a name of one at the moment, but there are definitely free ones out there. Do a search for recover deleted files or something like that.