I have a problem with my PC. Recently, for some reason, the settings readjusted themselves and everything appeared bigger than normal.
Having seen this before, I went to my desktop and clicked Properties. I then went to the Settings tab and played with the screen area. It would go too small and a pop up would ask if I wanted to make that setting permanent.
It kept not looking correct, so I would click no.
Finally, I took it all the way to the right and my monitor went black with a small text box that told me that my monitor was “Out of Range” it listed a minimum and a maximum MHz beneath it.
Because of this, I couldn’t find the “do you want to make this permanant” question to undo the mess I’d caused.
I have seen this “Out of Range” box before when my computer was attempting to open graphic intensive PC Games (it all started since I bought a pricey video card).
It usually required restarting my PC. So I tried that. When windows loads, and it definitely loads, because I can hear it, it still has a setting that won’t allow me to see anything but the out of range box.
This means I can’t go back to settings and correct the problem.
Sounds like you were trying to use a refresh rate that your monitor couldn’t handle at the resolution you set it at.
The easiest way to fix it would be to restart your computer in safe mode here is how to do that in Windows XP , and use the “Enable VGA mode” option. From there, go back to your settings, and make sure your refresh rate is set low enough that your monitor can handle it - 60hz will work with practically every monitor made in the last decade.
Mind if I hijack as your question has been answered and mine is very similar?
I’ve been playing Age of Empires Conquerors Expansion on XP. The color was fine for the first week we had it installed, but now it flickers out of true and into a weird almost negative scheme (greens have lots of red pixels in them, etc). I tried fooling with the monitor settings and the few in-game settings. I then tried running the game as if run by Win 2000 or ME which seems to be working better, but it still jumps colors every once in a while.
If I alt-tab, I can get the colors back to normal, but they soon jump out again.
There are three independant variables that affect the colour you see on your screen.
Resolution, colour depth and refresh rate. Noth resolution and refresh rate affect the gemoetry of the screen.
First, fiddle around with the resolution until the “size” of the icons is back to what you remember it is. Common resolutions are 800x600 and 1024x768. I’m guessing by the fact that you got monitor out of range that you couldn’t handle 1280 or above.
Once youve done that, click the advanced button, go to displays and change the refresh rate until your monitor is back to normal.
Then, set the colour depth to 32 bit because anything less looks crap.