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Can't change resolution in usual way

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by caseyx

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Hi. First of all, you should know that I've been having some recurring problems with bad sectors on my hard disk as well as system hangs/application crashes. These may have something to do with the problem I'm about to describe.

I'm using Win98 SE. A few days ago, the OS hung on me. Even after leaving the pc for about 45 min, nothing had changed. CTRL-Alt-Del was ineffective so I simply pressed the reset button. As expected, Scandisk ran but on entering windows, the screen display suddenly became HUGE. I had not changed the screen resolution, which had been set to the one below 1024 (640x800, is it?).

Suspecting that the resolution had somehow been reset, I went into desktop properties (settings tab) in an attempt to correct the problem. However, the desktop image shown in the dialog was so large that, even after dragging the dialog as far up as possible, I still could not see below this image (where the settings info is). I even tried moving the entire screen image by experimenting with the manual VDU settings, but this did not allow me to see past the large desktop image in the properties dialog.

I checked Microsoft's support page for tips but the only thing that looked promising was a keystroke (CTRL+S) used to reformat and resize the Volume Control window. Of course, this did not work with Desktop properties.

Needless to say, continued use of my pc has been somewhat challenging due to the inability to see screens properly. Does anyone know of an alternative way to change screen resolution settings? If not, what can I do?

11 replies

by fbpettis

try booting into safe mode. check to see if your monitor driver and video card driver are correct under system settings. You could also try deleting their profiles from there and rebooting. The system should recognize them correctly on reboot.

Another thing you might try since you have been having crash problems is reinstalling windows 98 over the top of this installation. It might be possible that on the system hang and reboot, that you lost some chunk of info. With bad sectors it might betime to get a new hard drive. Or at least back up crucial info and format c:

by caseyx

I don't know what my monitor and video card drivers are supposed to be, so I can't verify them in safe mode. However, I did go into Control Panel's system properties and this is what I discovered:

Under display adapters, an S3 Trio32/64 PCI device was shown. In its properties window:

1. The Resources tab said that this device isn't using any resources because it is currently disabled or has a problem.

2. On the Driver tab, there is an option to update the driver. Would this fix the problem?

3. On the General tab, however, the S3 adapter's status wasn't available due to safe mode restrictions.

Then, in the default monitor properties window:

1. On the General tab, the device status wasn't available due to safe mode restrictions.

2. On the Driver tab, it was stated that no drivers are required or have been loaded for the monitor. There was an option to update the driver, however. Would this fix the problem?

If I'm on the wrong track, please explain how to check the monitor and video card drivers, delete profiles, etc.

by thechas

Re-installing the video card driver should take care of the problem.

You may need to install the chipset drivers for the motherboard, and DirectX first in order to get everything to work properly.

I agree with answer #1, I would back up the drive, and start over again.
Rather than just format, I would delete all partitions from fdisk and start over with a bare drive. Running fdisk, will remove most bad sectors from the partition table.

It also may be time to replace that drive.

Chas

by caseyx

Chas, please explain to me how to do all of this. Can the video card driver be reinstalled (from within Control Panel) by updating the display adapter's drivers? My display adapter is an S3 Trio32/64 PCI.

by thechas

Hi,

I would start by going to www.s3graphics.com and downloading the latest driver for your card.

If the file is a .exe, you just run the file, and follow the instructions.

If it is a .zip file, use winzip or whatever utility you have on your system to extract the files.
I would use drivers\trio for the folder.
If there is a setup.exe or install.exe file in the folder, run that program.

Otherwise, from display properties, settings, advanced, display adapter, point the update driver wizzard to the folder with the extracted driver files.

As I mentioned in my first post, you should update the chipset drivers first.

You should be able to identify the chipset from expanding the system devices branch of device manager.

Alternately, you can use belarc advisor www.belarc.com to create a detailed list of what is in your system.

Follow the same proceedure as the video card driver to update the chipset driver.

If you need links for motherboard information / drivers,check out www.motherboards.org

Chas

by shanghai sam

Hi again. I searched for the chipset info in Device Manager as you instructed. However, this gave me a set of results which has left me a bit confused. Here it is:

1. Intel 82371EB PCI to ISA bridge (ISA mode)
2. Intel 82371EB Power Management Controller
3. Intel 82443BX Pentium II Processor to AGP Controller
4. Intel 82443BX Pentium II Processor to PCI bridge (with GART support)

Which one of these items indicates the chipset? Belarc.com was not any help. I got it to give me a pc profile summary but I can't find any explicit chipset info in it.

Also, do you know of any chipset driver download pages?

by caseyx

Chas, please check that url - it doesn't load in IE and yields a "Document contained no data" error in Communicator. These strange occurrences took place despite my removing the url's trailing space. I spent the entire night looking for a suitable download page but to no avail. The closest I got was here (http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/ and http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/Product_Search.asp?Prod_nm=440&Prod_ty=Name), but these pages only have graphics drivers for the 810 and 815 series.

by thechas

I copied and pasted the link from within IE.
I suspect that the script terms in the link are whats causing the problem.

I went about finding the driver file a different way this time.

Try this url
http://developer.intel.com/design/software/drivers/platform/inf.htm

Remove any spaces.

I got there by going to www.intel.com
click on support
under downloads, click on for developers
click on the link for chipset drivers
click on chipset matrix
click on the link for the chipset utility for your chipset.

Chas

by caseyx

Hi, Chas. I got the .exe download ok and ran it but when I rebooted, my pc detected a new hard disk controller and tried to load a driver that could not be found anywhere on my Win98 SE cd or boot disk. I therefore abandoned this. Then, when I triedto update the display adapter drivers through Device Manager, the system told me that no suitable drivers could be found on either the cd or the floppy. When I clicked 'Have Disk' and tried selecting some from a list, I was told that my chipset was not designed to work with such drivers and that installing them could yield unpredictable results.

Then it hit me - maybe I could reset the screen resolution from within Desktop properties by simply using the right cursor key to increase it. To myrelief and delight, it worked! So I didn't need to go to all of this trouble after all. Still, I guess it wasn't a total waste as I did learn a few things (not to mention gaining an invaluable tech contact). Anyway, I'd like to express my sincerest,heartfelt thanks to you for painstakingly guiding me through this ordeal, in spite of being so busy (as evidenced by your response times).

Thanks a lot and hopefully we can chat again under less exasperating circumstances.

caseyx

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