2011 MacBook Pro External Display Problem

[liquidpaper]

Hello everyone,

I've been searching around for some answers regarding a problem I've been having with a Samsung SA550 monitor.

I connected my MBP via the Mini-Displayport to VGA to the monitor and everything was pretty swell. The resolution I was using was 1920 x 1080 and everything looked sharp. Using this resolution, there was no letterboxing on any side. I also intended to use the MBP in clamshell mode only to save space. It worked great!

However, I was fiddling around with some of the options and decided to click on "Detect Displays" under Displays in System Preferences. Ever since then, whenever I tried to use the 1920 x 1080 resolution, the image does not size up to the full size of the monitor and I get two empty black spaces on the left and right side of the display.

Does anyone have any idea on how I can get back to how it was before? Among playing around with the settings, I also tried resetting the PRAM and NVRAM and unplugging both the power and the display cable for the monitor and replugging them in to no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[arjen92]

just making sure, it's not in mirror mode, right?

 

[liquidpaper]

just making sure, it's not in mirror mode, right?

Nope. I tried playing around with that to no luck.

One weird thing was that after I tried detecting displays, I was playing around to see if I could fix the issue with the MBP open and not in clamshell mode.

When I was doing this, the Samsung monitor was being used as the secondary screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. It also did not have any letterboxing. Being adventurous, I wondered what would happen if I tried to "Detect Displays" for it. Sadly, the end result was that it ended up with the left and right side being letterboxed as well.

Coming from Windows, I'm not as good in playing around with the system files of OS X. I'm imagining it might be an issue that goes beyond the basic skills that I have.

Additionally, I tried to see if anything in the monitor's settings menu could help, but its option for display size is fixed to two settings, "Auto" and "Wide." Both options do not do anything.

 

[liquidpaper]

Lastly, I tested out the monitor with Windows through Bootcamp, and the display works perfectly fine, full screen.

Does anyone know what could be going on? I suspect it's some sort of display profile file in OS X or something that I want to edit or delete.