Simple clear advice in plain English

White space on Windows loading screen

Gap on Windows loading screen is no cause for alarm

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Q The Windows XP loading screen on my laptop has a 5cm gap at the bottom of the image compared to my desktop PC. The display is fine once Windows has loaded.

Mel Holmes

A The Windows loading screen is a fixed size that doesn’t change regardless of the capabilities of your monitor.

So long as the monitor is the same size of the image, nothing will look amiss. If the screen is a different size or aspect ratio then the computer will either try to stretch it to fit or centre it on the screen. On a widescreen monitor this will either make the image look too wide or produce the black lines you describe. While there’s nothing you can do about them, there is nothing wrong with the computer.

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