Video adapter will not keep its display settings

maureen · 5th July 2002

I can’t figure out what’s wrong with my video card, but I suspect that I must have hurt it bad when I unplugged the phone line from the wall (someone else needed to use the phone line). Yes, (hanging head in shame), the computer was on and running at the time. I’m basically writing here to confirm or allay my suspicions.

I’m running a older machine, Pentium Pro 200 MHz, 128 mb ram, OS W98se (no agp slot, video card is pci). After the line unplug event, the next time I booted, the computer started in safe mode with an error about the video adapter’s settings not being appropriate. So I went in to the display properties and tried to change color depth and resolution settings, but they wouldn’t keep on re-boot, I was still at 16 colors and 640-480 resolution.

I reinstalled the video drivers in case they had corrupted, then reset the color & resolution, no change. I deleted the video adapter from device manager, then reinstalled the drivers, reset the color & resolution, no change. I deleted the monitor and reinstalled it. I moved the video card to another PCI slot, wouldn’t even post. Put it back in its original slot, no change. All my other devices and programs are operating fine, but my resolution & depth cannot be budged from the basic vga settings.

should I go out and buy another video card? or is there a horrible chance that this might instead be a motherboard problem (seems like the only way from the modem to the video card has got to be via the motherboard). Sounds like hardware, but should I try a windows re-install before putting money into this former old faithful? Ideas/suggestions anyone?

Rancher · 6th July 2002

You need to tell us the brand of video card. Also prolly when the fon line "pulled" outa the wall, the video card was snagged a bit & lost contact briefly. This the only way the fon line can affect the vid card. Start the box in safe mode & remove the drivers. Now restart & select windows VGA mode YES/OK restart, now install new drivers for your card.

**markp62** · 6th July 2002

You've already done the best solutions. I would try a reinstall on top of the current Windows installation, first. You won't lose any current configurations and programs doing this, but hopefully will correct any registry problems.
Or you could try starting in dos mode, and type in "scanreg /restore" and pick a date before the unplug, if it happened during the 5 days of starting 98. Each day of starting after 12:00 AM creates a new registry backup, one time only by default.
Good luck to you!

maureen · 7th July 2002

Mark - thanks. You were going where I was heading, but I was afraid of a re-install because I didn't want to lose everything on C: drive. You were right, it kept all the settings & files (added the usual dialup wizards, etc). I used the upgrade for Win98se. (Interesting because I had run system file checker before and it found no corrupted files) The re-intall did fix the display. I think.

After the install the video was back to 16 bit color, I was so happy. Windows found the correct driver for the card (it is a S3ViRGE VX-PCI 998, Rancher), but the resolution was defaulted at 640x480. so I reset the display back to 1024x780 and 24 bit color where I had it before, and when it rebooted, it crashed back into safe mode, vga settings again. Couldn't get it to keep any other settings, just like before.

So I resintalled Win98se upgrade again, to re-establish the 16bit color with 640x480. Being fearless, I decided to try again and changed the resolution to 600x800. It worked. i'm going to live with this for a while, until I have the time to play further with it. I'm in the middle of another computer right now, and need this one for downloading drivers, etc.

Thanks guys. I knew I could count on you!

-maureen

Profgab101 · 7th July 2002

In the "Device Manager" you will have either "DISPLAY" (in all caps) or "Display Adapters." If you have "DISPLAY" this is very very bad and could be causing all the problems.

This happens only in Win98 (that I have seen). It really doesn't matter the video card that you have. You need to get to it say "Display Adapters"

and here is how:

Making DISPLAY into Display adapters-

1) Make sure that under DISPLAY in normal mode, the correct video card is being identified- If it is correct go to step 3.

2.) Go through normal troubleshooting to get the correct video card to be identified.

3.) Boot into safe mode. (thats tap the "F5" key on boot)

4.) Go into display properties and on the settings tab choose advanced or advanced properties.

5.) Choose the adapter tab and click change.

6.) The wizard starts for an unknown device and do your usual next(s) until you get to choose "display a list of drivers".

7.) For the device choose display, then next.

8.) Choose "Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA)" and next, (yes we know the software was specifically written for this device), next, finish.

9.) This bring back to the adapter tab, click change again.

10.) Go back to step 5 and the only thing that will be different is that the device selection will now be called "Display Adapters" and again choose the same standard as before and the cycle repeats.

11.) When you get back to the adapter tab click apply, and when it comes to the display properties window click apply and then say Yes we want to continue and NO we do not want to restart- (note: if you let it restart then consider the format/reload). Close the display properties.

12.) Go into the device manager and you should have "Display Adapters" with 3 video cards showing:

a) The original video card
b) 2 Standard Display Adapters (VGA)

13.) Remove the original video card and the bottom of the 2 standards-, reboot-. Then it will find the video card and force you to reboot- do it.

Then you will be in normal mode and in the device manager you will have the correct video card and 1 standard left which will probably be splatted. Remove them both. Reboot.

14.) It will find hardware and make you reboot, do it. Then upon entering normal mode the device manager you will have "Display adapters" and the correct video card. Set to High-color 16-bit and 800x600- or whatever you want. And you are done.

This should only take 15 minutes or so. But it works with any video card in win98 & se.

Profgab101 · 7th July 2002

I skipped the most basic fault!

This should be checked first for most people.

Again in safe mode check the DM (Device mangler)

Check for display as posted above - but there should only be one item listed. - any others are ghost devices and should be removed.

And now for the most common issue - Ghost monitors. - Open the Monitor catagory in the DM - If there is more than one... Remove them ALL!

This has to be done one at a time, and once you have emptied that catagory the monitor catagory will go away... (until after you reboot)

During reboot it should detect one monitor - and then your done

maureen · 8th July 2002

Profgab,

I think you were absolutely right. I do remember having multiple entries in device manager under monitors. Your advice would probably have solved my problem – wish I had seen your post before taking matters into my own hand.

I was also having major problems getting online – had to repair/reinstall windows each time I wanted to get online, so I decided to format C: and reinstall windows clean. Backed up all my stuff onto my other partitions. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had a bios overlay on my hard drive (remember, it’s an old machine) so now I have access to nothing. Fdisk doesn’t work, format doesn’t work, DOS has no idea what format it’s looking at. Can’t re-establish the overlay on the C: partition because the program wants to overwrite the whole drive.

Will try to set the hard drive as a slave to see if I can pull off my data. What a total mess. I’m sitting here writing on a borrowed mac. If there is anything positive to report, I shall post back – hopefully from my own machine! Thanks for such a detailed reply – when I’m alive again, I’ll copy it and save it to my "good tech info to remember" directory . . .

-maureen

maureen · 12th July 2002

Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I emailed Western Digital, and they responded immediately with instructions (even a phone call) on how to restore the master boot record to the disk. (for those who may be in a similar predicament, the instructions were to boot from A: with the Win98 startup diskette, at the A: prompt insert the overlay diskette, type in their program command with an /mbr switch.) Once the mbr had been restored, I could see from dos that I had nothing in C: as I had intended initially with the format, and all my other partitions still had their data in them.

From there I simply needed to boot with the Win98 startup diskette again (following their bypass around A: and C:) and enable the computer to run with the CDRom so I could install windows.

The bad news is that after I installed windows, I had the same video adapter problems again – vga settings, 16 colors. Again, things began to deteriorate quickly: I was able to get online a few times, and then totally lost the ability to get online. After several safe mode loads, it now refuses to load windows, and gives me the infamous blue screen with this error code: Fatal Exception at 03D7:00006F5E It took about 4 hours to go from a functioning new install to a non-loading boot.

Profgab, just wanted you to know that I did check the device manager, and everything was copacetic after the clean install. None of the symptoms you described appeared there. Also found out that the S3ViRGE was a windows suggested driver, I went online to Gateway and downloaded the updated driver for the actual card - an STB something. But that didn’t help either.

I’m back to believing hardware again. Since I have tried several re-installs of windows and have now just finished a completely clean install – I doubt that it is windows. I am up for any other suggestions at this point. I’m wondering if there is a way to diagnose whether it is the motherboard or the video card, ’cause I’d hate to buy a new card for this machine if the problem is in the motherboard.

Looking for straws here…

-maureen

Rancher · 12th July 2002

Have you learned a lot or what

Consider: (1) Going to winXP (2) Do another "Clean Install" (delete primary partition & rebuild another, format, blah blah (3) Buy another PCI video card w/32 memory $30 (best solution) for $35 @ NewEgg.com

maureen · 12th July 2002

Yeah, Rachner, a LOT! this is a school I didn't sign up for either!

I'm not done. I have the ability to install Me, but cannot upgrade to XP because this machine does not meet the minimum hardware requirements - I think for XP you have to have at least a 300 MHz processor and 256k of ram? Anyway,

I don't give up easy. I am going to try to install the drive as a slave and burn off the data I need. WD has replied to my inquiry about a normal master trying to read through the overlay on this disk, and that will be my next step before trying another video card.

Lucky me, Rancher - I'm in So. California right now and there are Frys Electronics stores here - I bet I can get as good a deal as you mentioned on a PCI card or better - my favorite place to shop.

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I'll post back with the results -- eventually! ...

maureen

Rancher · 12th July 2002

Yep, winxp needs 300 cpu.
Fry's sure is a fun place to go, & when in Bay Area & sure do

You pent pro mobo combo should "See" your hard drive unless it's a new 40g. This would allow you to not have a bios overlay.

Good luck

maureen · 13th July 2002

Part 15

Very puzzling!

I stuck a small bootable harddrive from another machine with Win 98 onboard, into my machine as a solo master first, so that Windows on the little drive would get a chance to id my machine. When it started up, Windows was volunteering all kinds of drivers for this mobo's chipset and internal devices, etc. When Windows was all through, it was running a lovely 24bit color and 600x800 resolution. For kicks, I reset the resolution to 1024x768 and rebooted. It kept the settings! So, right now, it doesn’t look like the video card is the problem.

BUT … the Win98 on this little disk cannot read the two CD drives, one of which is the burner I wanted to use. They both show up in Win Explorer, but double clicking will not open the contents to be read. I went to device manager and discovered that the secondary IDE controller was listed with the usual fifo. No conflicts anywhere, “device is working properly.” I went into the bios, and both CD drives were auto detected and identified correctly.

So I tried loading the generic CDRom support by booting from A: with the Win98 startup diskette to see if DOS would recognize and read the two drives. DOS correctly identified both drives and indicated that the generic drivers had successfully been loaded for each in the ram drive. I tried to change directories to see if could do a "dir" and read the contents of the Win Install CD in one of the drives - I got an error message NOT READY READING DRIVE E. (or F.) I was not able to access either drive.

Doesn’t look like I could even do a fresh install on the little drive at this point, because it will not read either CDRom, not with DOS nor with windows, even though the bios does recognize them. I don’t know, is this weird? Or is this to be expected?

Now I’m stuck in the water again, and my paddle has floated away. If I did re-format the little drive, would that possibly restore the secondary IDE recognition at some level so that my OS could read the CD drives? I am really stumped. Seems like this one just won’t finish…

ideas?

Rancher · 13th July 2002

Looks like the mobo resourses were not loaded correctly! Even if win98 did appear too, you need the cd that came with the mobo to load the rite ide drivers or go to the mobo makers web site & download them