I have recently bought a new PC running Windows Vista Home Premium.
I have loaded the above programs for my son and when they a running
the screen is not centred and the is a black bar to the right of the
screen approx 3 cm wide.
I have tried to run the games in compatibility mode and as
adminstrator as recommended with other games but with no success.
Any suggestions would be appreciated as at the momnent I have a
disappointed son unable to play his favourite games.
Scotty touched on this, but I'll add more.
You have an LCD monitor, I'm guessing. LCDs only display at one
resolution, so like if your monitor is a Widescreen monitor and the game
is running at 4:3 ratio then you'll get black bars on the left and
right, or it can depend on the video card/driver in your computer.
The nVidia drivers for example have a setting where if your computer is
displaying at a lower resolution than what your LCD supports it can
either, zoom the image to make it fill the screen ignoring the aspect
ratio of the original image. This will fill the screen, but will result
in your image appearing "stretched" a bit, or it'll zoom the image as
much as possible without stretching the image resulting in black bars.
I'm reading my advice and it's a bit confusing to even me.
Check the in-game options for each game and see if there's an option to
change the resolution, or if there's a Widescreen option. Play around
with these settings until the game fills the screen.
What Scotty said applies if you're using an Analog connection to your
monitor (cable running from the computer to the monitor will have Blue
connectors). When your monitor changes resolutions the monitor might
note frame up the image correctly. When your monitor is displaying the
game, push the "Auto" or "Auto Adjust" button on your monitor, that
might fix it.
If your computer is connected via a digital cable (White connectors)
this shouldn't be an issue, in which case try my suggestions. You can
also right-click your desktop, choose Personalize and "Desktop
Settings", and finally Advanced, see if there are settings for your
monitor to stretch the image when zooming in.
If nothing here helps, respond here, include the make and model of your
system and monitor.