Display

[Guest]

I'm certainly hoping that I can be helped. I have Windows XP professional.
While @ work, my lovely grandson decided to go to a games website and
innocently play , so I was told. He said that suddenly the screen froze. He
turned off the pc. When he turned it back on, as I found out all eve. when I
returned, the resolution cannot go above 640 x 480 with a color quality of 4
bit. I tried system restore; unable to successfully restore to an earlier
date. I tried multiple times to change the settings, which could not be
applied. I finally ran Norton antivirus which did not find a virus. Help me
and save my grandson. Thanks

 

[Guest]

I'd say something went wrong with your graphic card drivers or the card itself.
Please go to System->Device Manager (inside Control Panel) and check if
there's any error with the graphic card there. Also, you may try with
rollback/update of the graphic card drivers.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your helping. I did take a look @ the Device Manager, but when
I clicked on it a window popped up saying, "Add/Remove Snap on." This same
window popped up when I tried to run Disk Defrag last night. Is something
desperately wrong?

 

[Kelly]

Hi Connie,

Reinstall your display drivers. However, I can't see how playing a game
would now prevent you from changing the settings back via Display/Settings.
Games do modify the settings but this shouldn't have been permanent.

Checkpoints/options to consider: Go to Start/Run/Regedit and navigate to
(use as an example)

1. HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO\{}\0000\....

2. Find DefaultSettings.XResolution. That is your y axis. Edit as a Decimal
to what you want it to be. (ie 800).

2. Find DefaultSettings.YResolution. That is your x axis. Edit as a decimal
to what you want it to be. (ie 600).

DefaultSettings.XResolution 320 for 800 horizontal
DefaultSettings.YResolution 258 for 600 vertical

3. Reboot.

Added info:

Follow these steps if you want to switch the display temporarily while the
game or program is running.

On your desktop or on the Start menu, right-click the game or other program
that you want to run in 256 colors, and then click Properties. Click the
Compatibility tab. Select the Run in 256 colors check box.

Run in 640x480 screen resolution check box. Your screen resolution will
revert to its previous resolution when you close the program.

The Compatibility tab is available only for programs or games located on
your computer's hard disk. It is not available if the program is stored on a
floppy disk, compact disk, or a network.

Switch Display:

Start/Programs/Game in Question/Properties/Compatibility Tab/Select 256 or
640x480.

How to Check the Video Driver
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q200/4/35.asp

How to Determine Which Video Driver Is Loading in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314854

Go to Start/Run and type in: msconfig
On the BOOT.INI page select /BASEVIDEO - this will reboot to the XP
equivalent of a Standard VGA.

User Display Settings
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_userdisplay.htm

System Tray Utility to Change Screen Resolution
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_quickres.htm