Stuck in 800x600, 16 colors

[nmarchan]

Hello, all. I desperately need some help.

I was playing a game on this computer when it crashed, and when I restarted there were these strange vertical lines on the screen and the computer wouldn't start up.

The computer restarted in safe mode (with the lines still across the screen), but it won't start in normal windows mode unless I'm using one of the standard display drivers (like Standard VGA, standard PCI VGA, or Super VGA which i'm using now.)

Furthermore, whenever I try to go to 256 colors using the SVGA drivers, it prompts me to restart, and the PC freezes/crashes on restart. Windows will load perfectly (though with some vertical lines/video corruption) up until the moment when it's supposed to start up and show the background and logon screen. Then it just freezes and nothing happens, usually on a blank screen.

Getting another computer is out of the question right now, and I'd really like to use it in something other than 800x600 16-color mode. Everything else on the computer seems to work fine.* I'm posting from it right now.

Computer:

HP Pavilion xl776

AMD Athlon 850 MHz processor

128 MB RAM

Nvidia Vanta video card (it's based on the TNT2 architecture.)

Windows 98 SE

Can anyone help me with this?

Note: I've never really opened up this computer and gone into it for anything, as I'm afraid of royally screwing something up. I'd like to try any non-hardware-tinkering solutions first, as this is a family computer and it needs to remain at least somewhat usable.

* There is a problem with Firefox where, after a seemingly random amount of time, all the images on web pages will spontaneously disappear and the text will look messed up.

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

I dont believe it is a HARDWARE issue, it seems to be a DRIVER issue. you may want to download updates, for your PC. windows 98, a little out of my date book, but i still believe it can be fixed. you dont really need to open up your PC at all.

I think your last resort would be opening it up and having to check anything. if worse comes to worse, do a fresh install of W98.

[Coldgunner]

go to nvidia's site and dload the forceware drivers(or whatever your vanta uses)

if you are a little worried about a hardware defect, open it, whip it out for a day or so, ask a friend to test it, if its screwed then maybe sticking in a radeon 9200 or geforce 4 or FX (assuming you got AGP), if its PCI only, get a geforce fx 5200, would be a good idea. cost around ?50

[Richardo]

As above, try the nvidia drivers first. If that doesn't work, or you can't get them, try this:

In the "Display properties" box, press settings|advanced and manually choose a better driver for the monitor. Choose Standard Monitor Type SVGA 1024x768 from the list of all the monitors you can select from.

You'll need a restart and then you can change the resolution/color again. If windows sees the regular Default Monitor it craps out when you tell it to push 1025x768 and > 256 colours.