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Monitor Color Settings

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I’m helping a friend with their Packard Bell system. She replaced the original monitor with an “unknown” monitor some time ago and life was ok until we installed an update for her Outlook Express. This caused Win98 to fail the startup. We tried safeboot and then tried uninstalling Outlook – no luck. Again in safe boot we tried msconfig, step by step confirmation and all other combinations, even eliminating all start up processes, still no luck. So we upgraded her Win98 to Win98 SR1, and then we were able to get Windows to load. Now the problem is that she can only run 16 colors on her monitor. I’ve tried all the Standard SVGA options, but they will not load – on restart, it returns to unknown monitor, 16 colors. I’ve tried all resolutionswith the same problem. I’ve inspected the monitor from top to bottom but cannot find any indication of the make or model or manufacturer – and she no longer has the documentation. Is there some other way I can find out what kind of monitor this is?

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Monitor Color Settings

In reply to Monitor Color Settings

Try this Start>Settings>Control Panel,Double-click the system Icon,Click Device manager tab,clickthe Plus on monitor,highlight monitor in drop list,now select properties and add monitor if not present,otherwise click on the update driver button
2ndoption will be to manually install drivers from disk from the run command.

Monitor Color Settings

In reply to Monitor Color Settings

Unknown monitor and no drivers for the monitor since I don’t know what it is!

Monitor Color Settings

In reply to Monitor Color Settings

It sounds like more of a video card driver problem to me. I think I would try updating the video card driver – I have had some bad experiences with Packard-Bell hardware and the standard Windows video drivers.

Once you get the video card driversright, I’ll think you’ll find that you can install the monitor as a Standard SVGA and get the combination of resolution and colors you want. An SVGA monitor should, at the very least, support 256 colors at 800×600 but only if it’s being driven by aproperly configured video card.

paul

Monitor Color Settings

In reply to Monitor Color Settings

This was it – had to update the video driver (Rage IIC) and the DirectX drivers. Now it’s fine! Thank you!!

Monitor Color Settings

In reply to Monitor Color Settings

I think your first step is to find out what video card is installed as it sounds like a corrupted video driver or that it is using standard vga card setting. Right click on screen, go to properties, settings, and change adapter. This will tell whatit is set at now. Change this to the correct driver and you should be okay. I dont think it has anything to do with the monitor.

Monitor Color Settings

In reply to Monitor Color Settings

Already had the right video driver, but I guess the version wasn’t acceptable to the Win98 upgrade.

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