petemoore: i have just bought a new laptop with the newest version of windows 8
i have done all the install for bgt and try as i might i still get a small screen with black boarders on the left and right
i am a computer illiterate so any simple step by step help to get bgt to fill the screen would be very welcome
thanks in advance
p.s i have tried the widescreen mod but it doesnt seem to do anything and also tried to change config screen size and my own laptop screen size with the result being the same sized screen when i play bgt

Hickory: Take a look at some solutions here.

Samburger: I had a similar problem. My laptop has a native resolution of 1920x1080. BGII showed up as a tiny screen surrounded by black borders. I scoured the internet, and nothing I tried worked. The Nvidia and Intel control panels are absolutely worthless.

I did find a solution though, I think. I don't know if it will work with BGT, but all I did was disable 3d acceleration in the config. This worked to give full screen at any of the game's natural (and unsupported) resolutions, but there were problems with massive slowdown, mouse flickering, and artifacts.

To fix this, I downloaded ddraw fix. You have to use the second option when you run it, "Use WineD3D DirectDraw Library" because the first option has issues with Windows 8. That resolves the slowdown and other issues, though it will take a long time to load into the game when you start it up, and I think there are alt+tab issues.

I only did a test with the tutorial (not having time to play yet), but everything seemed to work fine there.

Your mileage may vary, since I don't know anything about BGT, and I uninstalled the widescreen mod before doing this. I just thought I'd throw it out there, because I bashed my head against this problem for two frustrating nights.

Actually, it was a post by Hickory from several years ago that ultimately led me to my own solution, so thanks Hickory.

petemoore: i have just bought a new laptop with the newest version of windows 8