how do i turn on the computer and go to safe mode to reset screen

[Bruce]

One of my kids tried putting in an old game, which tried to reset the screen
resolution. Now all we get is a message that says..... " Cannot display this
video mode. Optimum Resolution 1440 x 900 68v"
Now we cannot get past this black screen message. ESC won't work. Ctrl-
Alt- DEL won't work. I tried turning off the computer and turning it back
on, to no avail.

I need to restart the computer in safe mode and then reset the screen
res.....and I don't know how to do that.

Thanks for help.
Bruce

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Restart, and during the black screen just after the BIOS screen, press F8
many times.

 

[Bruce]

So, that helped for what I asked about, but it didn't help the problem....I
reset to a different resolution, but the setting doesn't stick. And then,
I'm still booting and getting that message.
The screen goes to black with the message below:

Cannot display this video mode. Optimum Resolution 1440 x 900 60hz

Do you have any idea what's happening here?
I'm running a virus scan to see if something hopped on today.
I uninstalled the program for the game she tried to install.
Is there a way to go back to yesterday's settings........when everything was
fine?
Thanks.

 

[Ron Badour]

When you reset the resolution, what settings did you try? I'd go with 800X
600 with a screen refresh rate of about 75 hertz and see if those settings
will stick.

 

[Bruce]

Thanks .... we ended up finding out how to do a system restore, so we
restored to couple days back, and all seems fine now. Really didn't have
anything significant that we backed up over.

 

[M.I.5¾]

One of my kids tried putting in an old game, which tried to reset the
screen
resolution. Now all we get is a message that says..... " Cannot display
this
video mode. Optimum Resolution 1440 x 900 68v"
Now we cannot get past this black screen message. ESC won't work. Ctrl-
Alt- DEL won't work. I tried turning off the computer and turning it
back
on, to no avail.

I need to restart the computer in safe mode and then reset the screen
res.....and I don't know how to do that.

Your machine is set to a display resolution that is not supported by your
monitor.

Boot your machine and while it is booting, continuously tap the F8 key
(strictly you need to do this as the BIOS detects the drives. Some BIOSes
use F8 to enter setup. Just exit the setup without changes and tap that F8
key). Eventually a menu will appear. You wish to select startup in safe
mode with VGA resolution (just safe mode if you have a VGA monitor
connection). Once into safe mode, right click on the desktop and select
'properties', and select the 'Settings' tab. Don't change anything and
click the 'Apply' button (which won't be greyed out even though you haven't
changed anything), and then click OK. Don't just click OK, because OK does
not include 'Apply' in this instance.

Now restart your PC. It should reboot more or less normally, but into
480x640x8 colour screen resolution which is supported by every monitor. Now
right click the desktop and select 'properties' and the 'settings' tab, and
select a screen resolution and colour depth supported by your monitor. It
is posible that you may have to reboot between selecting the resolution and
the colour depth depending on your GPU. You will need to manually rearrange
the desktop icons (unless you have the thoroughly recommended Icon Restore
installed).