Sounds like the driver for your display adapter is hosed. Check your device manager to see if the correct display adapter driver is installed. To do this, right click on My Computer, select Properties, the click the **Device Manager ** tab. Look for the heading for Display Adapter, and click the plus sign next to it. If it says, “Standard VGA Driver”, Windows found a problem with the correct driver, and substituted the generic VGA driver. If you have the driver disk that came with the computer, you can try to reinstall from that.
The display driver may also be listed with a yellow exclamation mark next to it, indicating a problem. Note the manufacturer and model of your adapter.
Now go to the manufacturer’s website and download it from there, usually drivers are listed under **Support ** or Downloads.
If you don’t have the disk, and you don’t know what adapter you have, you can try removing the current, incorrect driver by right clicking on “Standard VGA Driver” in the Device Manager, and selecting remove. Then restart your computer, and see if Windows can identify the adapter and automatically install a copy of the correct driver from the driver archive.
Thanx.
Hosed? Drive disk?
(Is that the same thing as the Windows 98 Plus! CD containing the operating system, or whatever it’s called? Or perhaps it’s a bitware CD? (I have both CD’s.)
The driver disk should be labelled ‘driver disk’ or ‘device drivers’ and it would be a Compaq disk. It is not the Windows 98 disk, nor the Bitware disk. You said you had a Compaq Deskpro 4000, but there should also be a model number on the front of the tower, the big box part of the computer with the CD drive and the power button. If you can locate that number (a four digit number between 5000 and 6999), I can point you right at the drivers on the Compaq website.
It turned out I had run “msconfig” (I was having trouble getting it to boot up normally) and put the computer into Diagnostic Startup mode. When I returned that dialog box to the screen I pushed the radio button for Normal startup, with all devices. Sure enough, when the computer restarted the full colors came up, my stylized cursor (Peanuts characters’ heads) reappeared, and my printer was once again accessible. :o
As for the model number, well, it’s moot now. I’ll go ahead and post an answer for you later on, since now I’m not in a hurry. (This Compaq is the kind with the flat box console, not a tower.) Thanks just the same.
Last night my computer made a high-pitched whine very briefly. This morning, in response, I attempted to clean off one of the fans.
Understand that, sadly, I suffer from anxiety attacks, especially over things computer-related, and thus I can’t tell if the whine is gone or not- I may be delusionally hearing it.
I tried to run SiSandra, which worked fine last night, but now gives me the following message:
Could not initialize device driver! Make sure you are admin; check driver permissions.
Then, if I try to scan anything with it, it says the program has generated errors and shuts itself down.
Now, I can still use AIDA32, which is a similar program.
I’m getting scared and paranoid and I don’t know… Is there some way to check to see if my HD is dying? My friend has said it’s either the HD or the fans, or, once again, I’m just being delusional about it and nothing is wrong.
Any way you slice it, I’m becomming a basket case right now.
For several weeks I’d been unable to send e-mails, via Hotmail, from home–my ISP at home is AOL. (The recipients complained that all they got from me was a blank Hotmail page.)
I sent an e-mail (from another computer) to Hotmail’s staff. One thing they suggested was to upgrade my IE browser from 5.0 to 6.0. I did so, and now I can’t even sign on to Hotmail at all at home–the flashing “toothpick” cursor doesn’t appear.
I called AOL and they said to reload the 6.0 browser. I did and it didn’t help.
What browser do you have on the computer you used to write the HotMail Staff? If possible, go to that on your Home Computer.
Another suggestion – delete all cookies and cached pages on your home computer (under “Tools” → “Internet Options” → “Delete emporary Files”. Or something like that; my OS is not in English on this computer…)
Failing both… switch to GMail, dude… write me (email in profile) and I’ll send you an invite.
To contact Hotmail I had to use a library computer, since I can’t log on at home.
Delete the cookies? O.K., if that isn’t something I already do (after 2 or 3 Internet sessions, I unboot the computer just after emptying the Temporary Internet Files (I prepared a shortcut with an icon on the desktop).
Well, I’m not out of the woods yet. In order to resume access to sites on the Internet that require logging in, I disabled much of the AVG system. Aren’t there other anti-virus systems I can download?
And I’m not fully satisfied that McAfee has been discontinued…
After about 6 months of usage it gets a little squirrely.
Have nothing worth keeping on my computer—so about every 6 months I do a system restore==going back to 5 years ago when it was brand new. Seems to help tremendously–seemingly constant error messages gone and 'puter works much faster.
But I realize that going back 5 years means I have lost all the Windows updates and patches for ME.
I try to use Windows Update----but it never works. Windows Update says I have 22 critical updates to install (well DUH --after 5 years I would suppose so)
I keep letting the critical updates go, since nothing ever happens because the 'puter does work better after a system restore----but I think I may be missing out on Windows ME improvements over the last 5 years.
Any suggestions?
Why does Windows Update never work for me? Does Windows put out any kind of disc to update older computers? (I have always found that using a disc works far times better than doing anything on line)
Well I let the 22 critical upgrades go because I just give up on the project after a while. So essentially I have a 5 year old ME computer with no patches or upgrades.
When I try to download the updates —absolutely zilch happens. I wait a few minutes and give up. I disenable Macafee thinking that might be a problem —still zilch.
Should I wait like a half hour for something to happen?
And why doesn’t Windows make a stupid disc for upgrades for their various computers?
Discs always seem to work quite well----as compared to doing things directly on-line.
Hi dougie_monty
Sure, there are other free antivirus programs, such as avast, but I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around it being avg’s fault that you can’t access sites. That’s the job of a firewall, not an antivirus. Are you running one? What are your security settings set to?
All I know is, before I disabled much of the AVG on my computer, I could not get the “toothpick” prompt necessary before keying in a usernamre and password–for the SDMB, for example. I had called AOL support, and “updated” MIE, the browser, several times. But since I did not have the problem before downloadng AVG, I tried disabling it. Now I can key in my username, etc.
And what security settings are you referring to–those under Internet Options?
Have you tried emptying your Internet caches and Windows temp files? That can cause problems like that. From the Start Menu, select Accessories, Systems Tools, Disk Cleanup. Select the C: drive, and hit OK. After the program scan your computer, check all the boxes on the left side, and hit OK. When it says Are You Sure, hit OK.
They used to, I have a disc dated February, 2004 that had all the security updates to that date for Win98se, WinME and WinXP. Unfortunately, that disc is out of print now.
By “toothpick” prompt I mean the blinking cursor in a text box, waiting for me to key text in. Specifically, on the page for the SDMB, I wanted to key in my Username and password, but with no cursor blinking in the text box I couldn’t enter any text.
The only problem I have now is I can’t get the colored icon on the gray taskbar, along the bottom, indicating AVG is updated; nor can I use AOL’s own Search engine.
