[SOLVED] PowerPoint Switching Modes in Presentation on Older Laptop

[TheFearedDoctor]

I have a very specific scenario that I've run into, and I can't seem to find anyone else who has had this issue. I'm a tech for a university, so I see all different levels of technology and issues that can come with it. Today, I had to help out an instructor in a classroom who was having issues. The classroom was an older one, with the system being a VGA cable run into an Elmo doc cam, with the Elmo acting as a switcher, and it running through a VGA out up to a projector. It's an old system, but that isn't the issue, just some background. The instructor was using a Fujitsu Lifebook T901 Intel Core i5-2520M 2.5 GHz with 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM. It had been upgraded to Windows 10 from the original Windows 7. The instructor had multiple Excel windows open as well as multiple Word docs, and Google Chrome with multiple windows and multiple tabs in each window. Needless to say, when she opened PowerPoint, it took minutes to start it up, and open the file she needed and to begin the presentation. There was visible lag between any clicks she did and the computer reacting. It was a mess. I had her close out of the Excel and Word windows, as well as closing out some of her tabs in Chrome, which seemed to help speed the system up quite a bit.

So all that exposition leads me to my question. Whenever she would begin a presentation, it would function properly (albeit still a bit slow) with the presentation opening up full screen with presenter mode on the Fujitsu laptop, at 1200 x 800 (I believe), and the presentation being sent up to the projector over VGA, where it was displayed at either 800x600 or 1024x768 (I can't remember). When the presentation would begin, it would act normally for a couple seconds, and then the presenter screen would push itself out of full screen mode and into windowed mode, and shrink down to a smaller window on the computer screen. Still functional, but not the correct size for simply going to windowed mode. On top of this, the computer thought the window was still in full screen, with the only icon available to resize being the PowerPoint specific resize icon. When that was clicked, it would then show the full windows boarder, and they could then push it back to full screen. It seems like it doesn't happen all the time, but most of the time it does. I haven't a solid answer as to what this could be. Maybe a resolution matching error between the computer and projector, even though the signal is going out as two monitors, and not mirrored? Or could it be something in PowerPoint itself? Any insight or even guesses would be great. Thanks!

 

[jojesa]

I work in a college and I have seen the same issue many times on different laptop models.
It happens only over VGA and DVI.
I have not seen the issue lately, since we switch all document cameras, projectors and externals display to HDMI and DP.

The computer or laptop is using the resolution of the external device on the main screen.
The laptop in question will act as if it was in full screen. In a sense it is on full screen mode, since it is using the lower resolution of the external device.

That issue is more prompt to appear on hardware that was not designed for a specific OS. Since Windows 10 is using generic drivers, instead of the manufacturer drivers.

It has to do with the OS since I have run Linux on the same systems and that issue is not present.

It had to do with how the OS handles the external display. By the way Windows 11 does not have that issue.

 

[TheFearedDoctor]

I work in a college and I have seen the same issue many times on different laptop models.
It happens only over VGA and DVI.
I have not seen the issue, since we switch all document cameras, projectors and externals display to HDMI and DP.

The computer or laptop is using the resolution of the external device on the main screen.
The laptop in question will act as if it was in full screen. In a sense it is on full screen mode, since it is using the lower resolution of the external device.

That issue is more prompt to appear on hardware that was not designed for a specific OS. Since Windows 10 is using generic drivers, instead of the manufacturer drivers.

It has to do with the OS since I have run Linux on the same systems and that issue is not present.

It had to do with how the OS handles the external display. By the way Windows 11 does not have that issue.

That makes complete sense. I had a suspicion it was something like that, but didn't think much of it since it was on extend mode and I assumed it could handle two different resolutions simultaneously. I will take this back to the instructor and see if we can come up with a solution for them. Thank you so much!