Everything was fine and dandy with my soon-to-be-one-year-old snazzy gaming lappie. I could play new games at max or near-max settings in a 1920x1080 resolution without really breaking a sweat, and whenever I tried to play an older game with a native 4:3 aspect ratio, it would scale flawlessly, using only as much of the screen as needed and showing glorious, now sorely missed black vertical bands on the sides, thus keeping the proportions right.

But alas! Some days ago, for no good reason, I was greeted by an ugly, stretched, misshapen travesty when I tried to run one of the games that had previously worked perfectly. The screen was filled, and the black bands that to date had guarded me against chaos and evil were nowhere to be seen.

It seems my graphics card(s) now think they need to fill the screen no matter what, and no tinkering with the drivers have convinced it/them otherwise. I'd appreciate any ideas you may have in order to bring back the old black bars of justice and continue enjoying my games in pristine unspoiled 4:3.

Some technical details follow, feel free to ask me if you need any other info, feel free to skip it and give a suggestion outright, sorry for the wordiness, just trying to mention everything that feels relevant:

Laptop: MSI G60 2PC Apache.

Graphic cards: Integrated Intel HD 4600, dedicated nVidia GTX 850M.

Drivers version: 10.18.14.4080 for the Intel, 347.52 for the nVidia. The latest in both cases, last updated after the problem started, so quite unlikely that a specific driver version is causing it.

Specific games affected (or not) and their observed behaviour:

Baldur's Gate (GOG version): Has no graphic options at all to be configured in-game or otherwise. Used to touch the upper and lower border of the screen, with black bands on the sides. Now it's stretched to fill the screen and looks horrid.

The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth (disc version): Resolution can be set in-game, but max is 1400x1050. Resolution can be tweaked by altering cfg files, so it can actually be set to run at 1920x1080, but the interface is stretched (plus, I want to run it at 4:3 which was its original intended resolution, 'cause that's how I roll. Used to run at 1400x1050 with black bands, now fills the screen and makes Isengard look like a joke.

Jagged Alliance (HB version, not sure if it's the same as GOG's): This one actually runs fine, in unstretched, black-band-toting 4:3 (and always has). It's supposed to be running on DOSBox anyway, fwiw.

Discworld (running on DOSBox): Runs at 640x400 when windowed, stretches to fill the screen when ALT+ENTERed, can't remember if it showed black bars before or not, just including it to have another DOSBox reference, fwiw.

The screen goes black and twitches around when launching the games and/or ALT+TABbing, indicating some scaling is going on, the thing is it's not being done properly for non 16:9 games (except for JA, for whatever reason).

So, with that out of the way, I wonder all that's left for me to say is this.

Did you update your video drivers recently?

In the meantime, you can get a widescreen mod for Baldur's Gate that lets you set the game's screen resolution. I'm not sure if you need to use it alongside a Tutu mod or if it's compatible with the vanilla game.

Have you edited the Dosbox config files?

Hmmm. I know NVIDIA drivers tend to reset some settings when you aren't looking. At the risk of suggesting something you've already checking, open up the NVIDIA Control Panel, and under "Display\Adjust Desktop Size and Position" there should be "Select a scaling mode:". Set it to " Aspect ratio" and "Perform scaling on" "GPU" and check the check box next to "Override the scaling mode set by games and programs".

GOG's DOSBox config files can also be edited.

It's not the first time I've heard about Nvidia botchering their drivers, especially regarding older games, so I wouldn't be overly surprised if it is an issue of theirs even if you say that it started before you updated.

Whether it's handled by the Intel or Nvidia drivers likely depends on whether the system is currently using the Nvidia or Intel hardware. Try forcing it (in BIOS) to use one or the other, so that it can't hit a blunt and switch on its own just because it feels like it.

Yeah, my motherboard has integrated Intel graphics as well. I just turn it off in the bios. Don't use it at all and having both adapters running is likely to cause issues.

That's a good advice for desktops but you can't do it on laptops (at least I don't know of any that allow this).

Yeah, I've occasionally messed with GOG's DOSBox config files, but GOG's DOSBox-based games usually work fine out of the (metaphorical) box, so I'm not particularly worried about those. I don't think any other GOG games are affected by this issue anyway (none that I've noticed, kinda scared to check them all).

I'm sure nVidia and/or Intel must have made a misstep at some point on the driver department, and I'm sure it won't be the last time, but I don't think my issue is caused by that (again, the drivers present at the time the issue started had been working flawlessly for months). What he said. I checked the BIOS just in case, but I either can't or don't know how to disable integrated graphics. Also, I remember having read about someone having managed to do it and messing their laptop badly, due to how these specific MSI laptops make use of both cards. It's pretty seamless, actually. The computer works with the Intel, and switches to the nVidia when needed. A LED lights up in blue if the Intel's being used, and changes to orange when the nVidia kicks in. If for some reason you want a certain program to work specifically with either of them, you can set it up on the nVidia control panel (found out the hard way, when some mid-2000s games insisted on running -shittily- with the Intel and had to force them to use the nVidia instead).

Wild theory ahead, feel free to skip:

It's as if something had caused that faulty "stretchy" scaling and the system had become "stuck" with it instead of coming back to the normal unstretched one. I remember having messed with ePSXe at around the same time I noticed this. I was configuring the graphics plugin for it, trying to solve exactly this problem (what with the different native resolutions and aspect ratios of different PSX games and their interaction with the emulator's 1920x1080 fullscreen resolution). At some point, the ESC button, which normally would pause the emulation and bring back the main emulator window, went to instead just display the Windows toolbar but keep the game screen fixed there. I had to go WINDOWS+L on it so that I could bring up the task manager and terminate the emulator from there. Again, I don't know if this could have been a cause or was actually a symptom, or if it has anything to do with anything else. The difference is I can just run ePSXe windowed at whichever resolution I want, but not Baldur's gate or The Battle for Middle-earth.

Go to your nVidia control panel and open Display >> Adjust desktop size and position.

For scaling mode check 'Aspect Ratio'
Perform scaling on (dropdown) 'GPU'
Check 'Override the scaling mode set by games'

Regardless of this problem, there is no reason not to use the widescreen mod, it lets you see more of the game area without changing anything about the game. You don't need any other mods either and it's really easy to install. Just don't set the resolution too high or things will get to small. Personally I find a setting of 1280 x 800 to be a good choice.

You need to read what he writes, if you want to give him advice:

Two suggestions I can think of.
1) Check scaling options in Intel Graphics Panel. I know it doesn't seem do be doing anything for me but the option is there if laptop is plugged in to a TV or monitor.
2) I had this problem with AMD cards so I don't know if these are present on Nvidia as well but it's worth a try - check if your refresh rate hasn't changed to something like 59 Hz. For me in some cases scaling was fine on default 60 Hz but the image was stretched in other cases (technically there were different settings for different modes).

Yeah, the same thing here on both laptops I tried out - basically all laptops I've seen with an Nvidia integrated graphics card (and even a dedicated card) are missing this option, which I think is a big bummer.