Display Settings? Help Needed.

[OpposingBalance]

I'm having a problem with my video.
When I got home from work yesterday, my computer was all messed up.
For some reason, I'm stuck with my monitor settings on 16 colors, 640 x 480 pixels.
Every time I try and change it, and it asks if I want to restart my comp in order for the changes to take effect and I say yes, it switches back to the 16 colors and 648x480 in the instant before the screen blinks off.
I thought it might be something with my graphics card that I had been using, so I took it out and switched back to the original that came with the computer. (Its directly off the motherboard)
Didn't help.
I'm still stuck with the settings. Now everything looks horrible, and half the time I can't make out whats in pictures I'm trying to view.
Oh yeah, I can't run media player anymore either. For music or movies.
Anyone out there know what the heck is going on with my comp?
And how to fix it?

 

[Guest]

depending on what PC you are running, there are a few options -

If the graphics card is the original that came with the PC, you should be able to go to the manufacturers website and download the appropriate video drivers. remember to match the model PC exactly.

If its aftermarket, same thing should apply. Go to the manufacturers website and download.

If you have the original CD's that came with the PC, reinstall videodrivers from that.

Be careful to match the driver to the model of card, I fried one of works pc's installing the wrong sound card driver once, and had to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system.

If none of the above works, dunno.

Senator - NZ

 

[Guest]

I don't remember exactly how to do it, haven't used Windows in forever.... Maybe someone else can elaborate. But I believe you can change a setting such that it will apply the new display changes without restarting, this allows faster and easier tweaking.

Certainly the drivers may be a problem, always wanna have 'em up to date.

 

[Weird Harold]

I'm having a problem with my video.
When I got home from work yesterday, my computer was all messed up.
For some reason, I'm stuck with my monitor settings on 16 colors, 640 x 480 pixels.
Every time I try and change it, and it asks if I want to restart my comp in order for the changes to take effect and I say yes, it switches back to the 16 colors and 648x480 in the instant before the screen blinks off

My ex-wife's daughter had an HP Pavilion that did this several times. We never did figure out what caused it, but the only solution we could find was to completely restore from the original recovery disk.

The problem is with your video drivers and not with the hardware. For some reason your system is reverting to the "least common denominator" of display modes -- probably because it can't find/load the display driver.

If you have the drivers disk for your diplay card, reiinstall the dispaly drivers from that.

If you don't have the driver disk for the video card, try reinstalling windows.

 

[OpposingBalance]

Oh well, I give up.

I put the other video card back in, and reinstalled the drivers.
Now, when I change the display settings, and click apply, my screen goes black, and the little light turns off. I have to ctrl+alt+del to get the screen to come back on, and when I do, no changes have taken effect.

I don't want to reinstall windows either. I have way too many music and movie files that I'd lose.

Thanks for the help anyways.

 

[Weird Harold]

I don't want to reinstall windows either. I have way too many music and movie files that I'd lose.

Unless reinstalling windows on your machine requires using a "restore" disk like those packaged with HP computers that reformats your hard disk as part of the restoration, reinstalling windows won't destroy any data you have on the disk.

If you have a a copy of Windows rather than a "restore" disk, reinstalling will only affect the operating system files and will preserve your configuration information -- desktop, users, favorites, etc.

One thing you can try is the "System File Checker" (SFC.EXE) to check for corrupted system files. The name is changed on later versions of windows (later than Win 98) and some versions don't appear to have a system file checker. If your system does have it, it can check and replace individual system files that may have become corrupted.

 

[Guest]

I was just trying to see if I can post.

Thanks.

blindfoldgirl

 

[OpposingBalance]

Unless reinstalling windows on your machine requires using a "restore" disk like those packaged with HP computers that reformats your hard disk as part of the restoration, reinstalling windows won't destroy any data you have on the disk.

It does.
Require a restore disk, that is.
Its a Compaq Presario, AMD K6-2 533mhz, and came with 2 restore disks, which when used wipe everything else off the computer.

One thing you can try is the "System File Checker" (SFC.EXE) to check for corrupted system files. The name is changed on later versions of windows (later than Win 98) and some versions don't appear to have a system file checker. If your system does have it, it can check and replace individual system files that may have become corrupted.

Thanks, I'll have to look for that one. I have Win 98. But if I do have it, where does it replace the corrupted files from?

 

[Weird Harold]

It does.
Require a restore disk, that is.
Its a Compaq Presario, AMD K6-2 533mhz, and came with 2 restore disks, which when used wipe everything else off the computer.

Thanks, I'll have to look for that one. I have Win 98. But if I do have it, where does it replace the corrupted files from?

It will ask for your "windows disk" and you only have a "restore disk," so that idea won't work for you.

If you had a second hard drive, you could copy everything to the second drive to save it -- the restore disks only worry about drive C:.

You might try finding a copy of "Partition Magic" and creating a second partion for your data files and then restoring -- I'm pretty sure that it doesn't mess with partioning when you restore.

My daughter has a pair of Compaqs -- I'll see if she knows of any solution that might save your data files.

 

[OpposingBalance]

It will ask for your "windows disk" and you only have a "restore disk," so that idea won't work for you.

If you had a second hard drive, you could copy everything to the second drive to save it -- the restore disks only worry about drive C:.

You might try finding a copy of "Partition Magic" and creating a second partion for your data files and then restoring -- I'm pretty sure that it doesn't mess with partioning when you restore.

My daughter has a pair of Compaqs -- I'll see if she knows of any solution that might save your data files.

Cool, thanks.

I do have a second hard drive, but its the system save drive. I believe that when I use the restore disk, it wipes both of them.

 

[Weird Harold]

Cool, thanks.

I do have a second hard drive, but its the system save drive. I believe that when I use the restore disk, it wipes both of them.

Have you tried restoring from the system save?

That second drive doesn't really exist -- at least not in the sense that you can access it like a regular drive. At least the "system save drive" I've seen on other systems isn't; it's more like a compressed file than a functional drive or partition.

 

[OpposingBalance]

Really?
On my comp, its a real life seperate drive. I can access it, it just gives me a warning when I do that I could mess up my comp.

 

[Jedi_Outcast]

try changing the video driver to VGA. restart. confirm the video driver is vga, then restart again.That might get rid of all of the old driver crap.

re-install the drivers that came with the motherboard video card, then re-install directx, preferably directx 8.1 DirectX is tied into the media players as well. though the will NOT work when video is in 640x480x16. Not enough colors