Dell monitor drivers for Win98 - I'm desperate!

Factual Questions
1

I’ve Googled till my fingers were ready to drop, crawled all over the Dell support forum, and NOTHING is working. Please, prevent me from clawing my eyeballs out or throwing heavy objects! The wise brains here are my last hope.

I have an old Dell Dimension XPS T700r running Win98SE that I no longer have a use for. In my infinite wisdom, I offered it to my neighbor for her children to learn on. No good deed goes unpunished…

To provide at least basic security, I reinstalled the OS. The Dell E770s monitor then refused to display more than 16 colors or a resolution higher than 640x480. Figuring that a crucial driver must be missing, I reached for the handy Dell Resource CD that came with the system, and which helpfully states that it includes drivers. Drivers for what isn’t clear, because I can’t find anything that relates to this monitor (bought with the system, nothing exotic). Nothing. Nada. Windows appears to be running the monitor on a generic Plug & Play Monitor driver. When I manually go through the “Add New Hardware” process, in an effort to force it to find the correct drivers, it won’t display this particular model of Dell monitor.

I downloaded and unzipped dellmon.exe, the drivers for Dell 95/98 monitors. Unzipped just fine, but I still can’t get Windoze to use anything it provides. Efforts to use the “Update Device Driver Wizard” always result in Windows insisting it’s using the best available drivers. I’ve tried unplugging the monitor in the vain hope the system might treat it as a new device. No such luck. I’ve tried updating the drivers for the adapter (which Windoze lists as "Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA)). No such luck.

Folks, I’m DESPERATE! There’s gobs of stuff I can’t install with such pitiful display qualities. I’m going to have two small children begging for their new computer tomorrow night, and I don’t do children. I know this system can support much higher resolutions but nothing I’m doing is restoring the display qualities it had before the reinstall. I know I still have all the disks and CDs the system originally came with, and there’s nothing useful there.

HELP! :eek:

2

It’s probably the video card, not the monitor. I would be looking in that direction, anyway.

3

It is indeed the video card drive you want. The only thing a monitor driver is really going to help with is properly restrict the refresh rate.

Since it’s a Dell, you can use their web site, which is the best PC web site in the entire world.
Go to the support page, type in the tag number for the computer, and select the link for video driver download.
Alternately, go the support page, select your PC model, and then choose the link for the card that machine shipped with.

In any case, start here.

4

Specifically, go here, type in your service tag – it’s on a sticker on the side or back of the computer – and select Video Drivers for Win98. The applicable one should pop up and you’ll be good to go.

5

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who posted on this thread. It was indeed the video drivers that were missing, but boy, figuring out which one to download was a pain. The reinstall of the OS wiped out the information as to which video controller was installed (there’s even a coy little note on Dell’s web site that suggests that some information isn’t available if the OS has been resintalled - no kidding). I did some additional Googling, figured out what the most likely controller was, and then everything fell into place. The system is now running so smoothly I’m trying to recall why I’m giving it away :confused:

Tonight the kiddies get their new 'puter and I get some relaxation time.