Help with changing resolution

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Simon - 12 Mar 2006 14:10 GMT

Our local school was getting rid of all its old computer equipment and
donated one to the pre-school that I help with. I have a problem with
it in that I can't change the screen resolution.
It's a 1GHz Celeron running W98 release 2, so it's not desparately old.
I opened the case, but it looks like it must be an on-board graphics
card - I can't see anything obvious to identify it. I've tried to
change the driver to all of the standard types - VGA, Super VGA, etc,
but none of them let me increase the resolution from 640x480.

If I need a specific driver for the graphics card, how do I find out
what the card is?
I'm trying to locate the original disks that came with the machine, but
I don't hold out much hope of the school finding them.

I've tried a few different monitors - windows identifies them as a Plug
and Play monitor. It correctly indentified one of the monitors as a
Hyundai ImageQuest 770 and picked the correct driver, but that didn't
help.

Any suggestions?

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Noel Paton - 12 Mar 2006 14:36 GMT

Reboot to Safe Mode
Open Device Manager
Remove ALL Display Adapters
Remove ALL Monitors
Reboot to Normal Mode - Windows will reinstall the required drivers -
hopefully curing your problem.

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> Our local school was getting rid of all its old computer equipment and
> donated one to the pre-school that I help with. I have a problem with
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
>
> Any suggestions?

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rhiannon - 13 Mar 2006 19:51 GMT

Hi, I had the same problem with my computer. Try re-loading the monitor
driver, if you have it. This worked for me, hope this helps.

Rhiannon

>Reboot to Safe Mode
>Open Device Manager
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>>
>> Any suggestions?

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***** charles - 14 Mar 2006 12:53 GMT

> Our local school was getting rid of all its old computer equipment and
> donated one to the pre-school that I help with. I have a problem with
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
>
> Any suggestions?

It sounds like the graphics subsystem is on the motherboard and the
graphics driver is not installed correctly.

1. identify correctly the brand and model of the motherboard. to do
this boot the computer and when the bios string is listed at the bottom
of the screen hit the pause key and write it down.
if on the other hand, the brand and model of computer is written on
the outside of the case in the front, that's a start.

2. then google the string or parts of the string until you have correctly
id'd the motherboard. if it is a name brand, just go to their site.

3. once you know the motherboard and its' type of graphics subsystem
find a website that has the correct driver, download it and install it.

If the motherboard turns out to be a popular one like say Intel, Asus,
MSI etc.... you may get lucky and find the driver you need fairly easily.
On the other hand if the motherboard is an off brand weird one you
may never find what you need.

later,
charles....

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Franc Zabkar - 15 Mar 2006 20:21 GMT

>Our local school was getting rid of all its old computer equipment and
>donated one to the pre-school that I help with. I have a problem with
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>If I need a specific driver for the graphics card, how do I find out
>what the card is?

Look for hidden files in your root directory named Videorom.bin or
Oemrom.bin. Use the edit command (see below) to view them.

Alternatively, you can write the VGA BIOS code to a file by typing the
following commands in a DOS window:

debug
-n vgabios.bin
-rcx
CX 0000
:8000
-w c000:0
Writing 08000 bytes
-q

Now view the file contents as follows:

edit /r /64 vgabios.bin

Use Page-Up and Page-Down to scroll through the file. There should be
a text string identifying your VGA card or chipset.

- Franc Zabkar

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