Here is the problem. This all started when my fiance started my computer one day. I was not there so I don’t know how or if anything went wrong. The display, when it turned on, was set to 640 x 480, 16 color. It has been like this ever since. There is also pink vertical lines all over the monitor, about an inch apart. Sometimes when I move the mouse the display scrambles in the area around the pointer. I tried to trouble shoot the problem with Windows help, which was no help. I have searched online for help to no avail. It won’t let me change the display to anything other than 640 x 480, 16 color. When I try to change the display, it tells me I need to restart the computer before the changes take place (even though I changed the monitor settings to allow me to change the display without restarting). When I restart it the changes have not taken place. In safe mode it does not even give me the option of changing the display. I bought this monitor brand new about a month ago and have had no other problems with it. Also, the screen does not mess up until after windows has started. The display of the clouds that says window is loading shows up in true color, no pink lines. I’m at my wits end with this. Could it be a video card problem? The Teeming Millions are my last hope before I have to pay for a diagnosis. I appreciate your help.
I highly doubt it’s the monitor. Your first course of action should be to determine the type of video adapter you have and find an updated set of drivers for it on the manufacturer’s website.
Install the new drivers and see if that fixes it.
If that doesn’t solve it, you might want to invest in a new video card. Any cheap one should do.
Per Jpeg Jones your system has probably gotten a corrupted or incorrect driver partially installed which is why it keeps looking for (but cannot find) the correct driver and gives you notice of this.
What is your video card /video chipset or if it is integrated on the motherboard what is your computer model? A new driver set will likely solve your problem.
What is your refresh rate set to? If it’s set too high, that could cause some funky things to happen.
I don’t think it is the refresh rate. I changed that and it is low enough now that it almost hurts my eyes to look at the screen becuase of the flashing. I have a Gateway Performance 500 computer with a voodoo3 video card or adapter I don’t know the difference. I looked for driver updates on the Microsoft web site and did not find any. I have not tried the video card manufacturer’s web site yet. I will try that when I get home from work. How easy is it to install a new video card? Thank you for the help.
Here is the gateway banshee voodoo driver link
http://support.gateway.com/s/VIDCARD/Creative/V00910/V00910nv.shtml
here are the OEM drivers for the voodoo3
http://www.voodoofiles.com/3201
You might want to try the OEM drivers first
Gosh, I hate to suggest something so simple, but I have seen similar monitor problems, and the trouble turned out to be…
the monitor cable was not firmly seated into the video card.
So, hate to be simplistic, but the first thing to check is to make sure the cable is firmly situated into the card, and that none of the pins are bent.
Good luck.
I checked the cable already, it seems fine to me. It looked like a pin was missing, but I checked my old monitor, which does not work at all, and it looked the same way so I dismissed it. I will look further into that. It looks like downloading that driver is my best bet. 8.5mb is going to take a lot of time on my slow home connection. Thanks for all of your help.
ok… first confirm whether it’s a hardware problem or a software one…
boot up to either the BIOS’ CMOS setup screen (generally accessed by pressing DEL, or F2) or boot to DOS.
if the screen looks ok, and the colour is fine in the CMOS setup screen then your monitor is alright and the connection is also fine, and there is an extremely high chance that it is a video adapter driver problem. in which case, follow the advice offered above on drivers.
The screen is fine until windows is loaded and my desktop appears. It looks normal when the CPU is off and my monitor displays a message that it is going to turn off. The monitor menu where you can change color, screen size and such shows up normal as well. I am happy to hear that the monitor is fine. I don’t want to replace that again.
Well I downloaded the driver from the OEM. As soon as it was installed and restarted everything was back to normal, if not better than before. Thanks for all the help.