I have an HP Omnibook laptop with XP-pro as its operating system. 
I've loaded the wordprocessing program I use, NotaBene4.  NotaBene4 is
a DOS based program.  When I call NB4 from the desktop it gives me a
screen that is about a sixth the size of the computer screen, so small
the program is unusable.  When I press ALT-Enter the NB4 screen
enlarges to about a third of the computer screen, large enough to be
usable but still pretty small.  Also the bottom half of the NB4 screen
is black.

Is there a way I can enlarge the NB4 screen to fill the computer
screen?  Can I have a full-screen DOS program on a machine whose
operating system is XP-pro?

The same problem occurs with a DOS-based Norton Commander program but
interferes less with the functionality of the program.

---

Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 15 Sep 2003 09:38 PDT

Have you tried setting your Compatibility Mode to 640x480? Many old
DOS-based programs assume this to be your screen resolution.

Hi Soctiestudent!

  I think I know what's causing this.  It should be quite easy to
solve if you're prepared to poke around a bit in your computer's BIOS.
 Here's the basic steps - let me know if this works or if you need me
to be more specific:

1)  When you switch on your computer from cold, you can access its
BIOS (Basic Input Output) settings by starting a special menu.  The
method to get into the menu varies from system to system, but is
usually just a case of pressing the right key at startup.  When your
screen first lights up (it may be white text on a black background or,
more likely, a coloured HP logo) look for a clue like "Press F2 to
enter Setup" or "ESC for BIOS" or "F10: Settings"... ...something like
that.

2) If you pressed the key at the right time, you'll get into the BIOS
menu.  Look for an option called "Text mode" or "Expansion". 
Basically, you want to tell the system to *expand* low res screens to
fill the whole display instead of keeping them at the native
resolution of the display, which is what makes them very small.  The
options may be "standard" and "expanded", for example (you want
"expanded".

3) You'll usually need to also find the "Save Settings and Exit" menu
item.  Or it may be that you have to press F10 to save and exit.  You
should find it tells you at the top or bottom of the screen how to get
out of the menu.

So let me know if this solves your problem.  And if you get lost in
the BIOS menu or thing you may have changed the wrong settings, you
can always turn the machine off at this point without doing any harm. 
If you request clarification with the exact model/number of your
computer I may be able to find instructions for your specific
machine's BIOS.

- Izzard-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by soctiestudent-ga on 18 Sep 2003 08:23 PDT

The only message I could see on booting instructed me to press F12. 
When I did I got four lines telling me something about an Intel
element.  It was up only briefly, then gave way to the regular Windows
sequence.

When I get a chance I'll try starting the machine and hitting F2, and
if that doesn't work starting it again and hitting F10, and so on. 
But it's time consuming, doing that.  If you can tell me just what to
do, it would save the hit and miss.

The "System recovery" disks that came with the machine have the
identifying alphanumeric:    F4506-12034A 6100.   Is that the right
identifying information?

---

Clarification of Answer by izzard-ga on 18 Sep 2003 12:29 PDT

Hi again!

No, that seems more like a serial number.  The model number might be
next to the word "Omnibook". (Have you looked at any/all the labels on
the bottom of the machine?)  It sounds like F12 simly clears the HP
logo so you can read the startup information.

Okay, you've tried F12, you should really try Escape, F2 and DELETE
(those are the most common keys to get into a PC's BIOS).  This really
is the way to solve your query.   If you manage to find the model
number of your computer, or get into the BIOS and can't find the
expansion option, go ahead and request clarification again and I'll do
my best to help!

- Izzard

F2 did it.  And there is an instruction at the bottom of the first
screen to appear on booting which says "F2 for bios, F10 for
diagnostics, F12 for [?]"

I shifted the video expand line from disable to enable.  When I booted
up again I was able to get a full screen for the DOS word processing
program.  However only the top half of the full screen was in fact
enabled: the bottom half was empty and stayed empty.  Nevertheless the
program is more nearly usable than it had been.

Thanks for the help.

Ah, well done, I know you'd find it. I'm surprised you still have an
issue with part of the screen missing though. :(

One other suggestion - have you tried plugging in an external monitor?
Most laptops include a standard VGA connector on the back, so you can
plug in any monitor you have around.  (If you do this, you usually
have to press a key combination to tell the laptop to turn on the VGA
output...and it's usually the (blue) "Fn" key and one of the number
keys. Look for a little blue picture of a screen on the number keys 5,
6 or 7, for example.)

The half-screen display is clearly a Windows 2000/XP problem.
I've found the following instructions:
"Switch to Windowed mode by pressing <Alt><Enter> 
Right-click on the title bar of the window 
Select "Properties" from the menu 
On the "Layout" tab, set the Buffer and Screen Height settings to 25 
Press "OK" 
Select "Save properties for future windows with same title" 
Press "OK" 
Then you can switch back to full screen mode by pressing <Alt><Enter>"

If that doesn't work, try selecting not "Properties", but an other
option in the same menu that gives you an identical window (I have no
idea how it's named in English version, so just try all of them) and
set Screen Height to 25.