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I have wide black side bars that part of the finder is hiding under

I left the machine on as I slept and I now have wide blank side bars on the screen.


Display Preferences help tells me about using the options button, but I have no options there.


Parts of my menu bar is hidden under the extra black side bands and I can not slide the screen to see those now hidden on screen menu controls.


I might have accidentally tripped some setting in my sleep with the mouse in my hand....... I'd like to open the displays options settings and fix the displayed edge of my screen but I can't get those settings to appear for me.


I'm using a Panasonic 39" 1080 TV on this computer and the Display preference screen seems to be locked into that and won't let me change it to a more general set of display options that would allow me to change overscan and the like.


AS IS NOW PARTS OF THE WORKING SCREEN ARE UNDER THE NEW WIDE BLACK SIDE BARS AND PART OF THE MENU BAR IS UNSEEABLE.


Displays will not allow me to reduce the screen display enough to see the entire screen.


The TV's settings in the TV shows me that it didn't change and that it is displaying normally at full screen.


The Mac mini is projecting those wide side bars and hiding part of the normal sized screen display under those. The background image is the normal size, but partly hidden under those black edges.


My screen is the normally displayed size, but added wide black side bars are hiding the far side edges.I reset the dock to the bottom from my normal position on the left to be able to use it after this problem happened..... the left and right parts of that are hidden by the black bars.


I shut down and restarted, but the screen is still messaged up. I tried the few display resolution options it is allowing, but the wide black margins remain unchanged. It's like the Mac is using the full screen width, while not projecting in the full screen width.


As of now, Its like the normal screen size is there, but the Mac is clipping its displayed screen size, hidding the right and left margins of all of the desktop.


How do I get to the expanded display options in the display box to fix this????? How can I get out of this lock on the Panasonic display that the Mac is locked into?


How can I normalize my display? How can I get to the full display settings ????

Mac mini, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), Using Panasonic 39" TV at 1080

Posted on Nov 24, 2015 11:40 AM

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6 replies

Nov 24, 2015 1:52 PM in response to lllaass

I have an under scan setting that won't reduce the display enough.


I do have a number of resolutions available........ But they all have the clipped on end/hidden under the black bar problem.

The screen is full width while it boots, once the finder comes up, it has/adds those side bands and part of the screen is buried under them.


So this Mac can display in full-screen. But finder now won't do so.


This cripples a bunch of the gui features like mounted drives and anything near the edge of the buried screen, including critical parts of the menu bar.


On other video preferences in previous Mac OS's and other OS's, you can set the amount of overscan, underscan, centering,and edge of screen, This display preferences has only an under scan option that doesn't fix the problem.


I had such settings when I first set-up this Mac a couple of OS level upgrades before. I remember tweaking it then. It is possible in the system settings, but those are NOT in the current Display Preferences, which is locked to the Panasonic TV detection.[something it is not allowing me to change]


This was working just fine less than 12 hours ago. Somehow it changed and I can't reset it. I may have clicked on something while I was falling asleep at the computer....... Now if I can only reset it to how was working some hours ago.

Nov 24, 2015 3:40 PM in response to lllaass

Did the SMC reset and the pram reset fails.


When I try to reset the pram the Mac goes into a 'lock' icon and sign-in. I have that password and put it in, but the system boots too fast to let me zap the pram........ I locked the motherboard with a password a couple of years ago.


When it doesn't go into an X-system rebuild mode...... Which is most if not all of the time that I try to zap the pram..... after you try several times it all blends together.


I at least repaired permissions after doing the SMC reset and there were some video settings it needed to correct. [display policy group and user]]


I still have the same video problem.


I could live with it if only the Mac would allow me to resize the finder to the limits of those overlapping black side bands. In terms of icon rows, on both sides, I can't see two rows of icons and the menu bar above that. All allowable resolutions hide under those side borders.


If I could only resize the display to fit, I'd be ok.

Nov 24, 2015 4:13 PM in response to lllaass

I have the solution.......


After trying a great many other things for about five hours.....


I swapped the video input on the TV to another socket.


Like MAGIC, my full screen is back !!!!


Let this be a lesson to me........... I/you/we MUST try different cable connections as one of the FIRST attempted fixes.


Normally, I would do just that.......... I wish I had..........


Now to sort of rebuild the set-up of the computer and get everything back where it was.


Thanks very much for trying to help me with this.

I have wide black side bars that part of the finder is hiding under

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