i am so pissed! please help! video always shows black bars using media player classic

let me explain my situation. lets start first of all that i'm pretty well versed in hdtv and the like and consumer electronics (i'm pretty much telling you out there that i'm not a n00b) and have the following laptop with an ATi Radeon Mobile X600 which is hooked to a number of sources using a 15pin d-sub cable. anyways i would always play movie files using media player classic, enable the second monitor and then drag it over to the other screen. i would select "stretch to window" and voila it would play the video from the bottom and top to left and right with no black bars. however all of a sudden and i have no idea how this happened, but i always see black bars on the top and bottom of the screen as if the video will no longer stretch. this is so annoying and i wonder if anyone here has managed to solve the problem. if not then i'll just deal with it.

i have windows xp service pack 3, k lite mega codec pack with media player classic version 4.1.0 (latest) i have everything updated, drivers and the whatnot and i tried messing with the aspect ratio, screen zoom to no avail.

has anyone else had this problem?