Ask David! Question:
My HP laptop screen suddenly has black areas on both sides, and those parts of the screen aren’t usable. If I move a window toward either side, part of the window disappears underneath the black area. This happened when I was trying to open GIMP. The screen seemed to suddenly snap into a different size. How do I fix this?
David’s Answer:
This is most likely a display resolution problem, not a damaged laptop screen.
Right-click an empty area of the Windows desktop and select Display settings. Find Display resolution and select the setting marked Recommended.
If Windows has switched to a lower resolution, the desktop may no longer fill the entire laptop screen. That can leave black areas on the sides, and anything you move into those areas can appear to disappear underneath them.
In this case, changing the resolution back to the recommended setting should restore the full usable screen.
As for why it happened while opening GIMP, launching a graphics application can sometimes coincide with a Windows or graphics-driver display-mode glitch. If GIMP was also being opened repeatedly because it wasn’t starting properly, that may have contributed to the problem.
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