TV Out Problem with GeForce4 MX420 NV17S

[Greymulkin]

Ok, I have some run of the mill NV17 (I think it's a Mad Dog MX420) in my HTPC and it's giving me black bars at the top and bottom of my TV. These are not the regular black bars you see with anamorphic pictures on a 4:3 display. These are much smaller, only about 1 inch or so. But they're driving me nuts.

I'd like to get rid of them, BUT I can not access the "Advanced Timings" property sheet in the drivers. It gives me the lovely message "The NVIDIA Display Panel has determined that this operation may not be safe due to missing information required to undo this operation. Therefore, it is not possible to proceed." Googling any part of that message yields only 1 (yes, one!) person who has ever had that problem. And it seems he / she was unable to resolve it.

To be clear, I am only trying to get rid of the black bars (Something tells me that if I give use the right resolution, the display will fill the screen. Right now it seems like it is being squashed to fit.) So getting the Advanced Timings to work is not the priority. I've tried PowerStrip, but I was never able to fully solve the problem.

ODDLY ENOUGH when I use The Core Media Player to play a video file, the movie fills the whole screen. And without changing the resolutions, no less. Anyone got any bright ideas?

[chuckiebox]

You went into nvidia properties and you went to device adjustments? Once you do that you can stretch out the screen and place the position anywhere you want. My problem is that the screen starts to drift on me after a while, so basically I all of a sudden have a black bar up top and half of my task bar on bottom is gone. Any suggestions?

[Greymulkin]

I can access the Device Adjustments but this only allows me to magnify /de-magnify the output or change the position. If I magnify it so that the picture fits vertically, I have overscan horizontally. Supposedly, Device Timings can remedy this, but I can't access that page.