For about two years now I've become increasingly annoyed at my PC screen. The left-most edge has been "clipped", missing about 2mm across all programs. I'm not sure when the issue first occurred, I just noticed it one day, so trouble shooting was a complete nightmare. Secretly, I theorised that a Windows Update screwed up some settings and resigned myself to live with it. It was annoying, but not massively problematic.
I hoped upgrading to Windows 10 would fix it, but lo!, the problem persisted. Frustrated, I re-installed graphics drivers, display drivers, nVidia's programs; basically anything I could think of. I fiddled with resolution, changed all the settings on the monitors own control panel, rotated the screen, downloaded apps... no dice. Once again I gave up, defeated and bored.
Fast forward to two two days ago, when a friend introduced me to the browser based RTS/Risk analogue: Call of War. It's a fun little game, running a freemium model with an active and friendly community (who are largely against using the "paid for" perks, which is nice) and a level of complexity I really wasn't expecting*. Unfortunately, some of the menus are pretty thin and almost entirely disappear off the edge of my monitor!
As a result, this afternoon, I re-attempted a brute force attack to fix the display. I refreshed drivers, updated control panels, searched through dozens of Windows menus and eventually, thanks to a comment on this forum thread, I found my solution. Irritatingly, I've likely hit upon it before but not noticed, as it requires a specific combination of settings/refreshes. The culprit was not Windows, as it turns out, but nVidia, whose (normally very useful) Control Panel had scaled my screen based on their "Aspect ratio" setting. That, it turns out, was causing the issue. I hadn't noticed it before because just turning the setting off doesn't fix the issue, I also had to refresh my monitor directly. With that weird combo learned it took 30 seconds and snap! my screen popped back into it's rightful place.
I guess there's some moral here about not giving up, persevering or thinking outside the box, but you know what? I'm not bothered. My screen finally looks "right", everything's a little sharper, menus are no longer absent and I can't help but feel the "call of war" (ahem). So, with technical issues defeated, I guess Central Africa is next on the list. Bring on the weekend!
* On that note, the provided tutorial and guides are fairly woeful, but the in game chat is a pretty good place to go if you have any questions.
