i just set up my computer but am having a monitor problem

i am proud to say I did this all by myself!!! (its not that difficult but was still an accomplishment!)
anyway,I bought a 17 in flat screen but the websites etc. are not showing on the full screem. Part of the right side is blank. How do you reconfigure it to fit the whole screen. I tried the buttons on top right but that didnt work. Its a Dell..

Thanks

on your monitor, there should be some button for a menu or on screen display (osd) or something. Find something in the menu that says 'position'. It should show you four arrows, going left, right, up and down. Using the buttons on your monitor, you should be able to configure it to use the whole monitor.

The other thing I thought of is if you right click on your desktop and go into 'properties', click on the 'settings' tab. Make sure the screen area is all the way to the right, on 'more'. I don't have windows XP, so it might be a bit different on your new computer. Good luck!

Did you try the actual buttons on the monitor itself? I don't know if it's the same way on the new Dell flat screens, but usually those buttons on the screen expand the display left and right and top to bottom. If those are the ones you tried and it still doesn't work, try messing with the display resolution (you find that under start>control panel>display and then click the appearance tab. OK, so I'm a bit of a computer geek! It's what I do for a living.
If this doesn't work or you need anymore help, feel free to FM me.