can't keep monitor resets

I am running XP Pro on HP Pavilion Celeron. All has been OK. About a week ago, I heard a pzzzt, smelled something burning and my monitor (17 ") fried. I went to basement, dug out an old 15" Dell Trinitron, which had originally been on this system and working OK, but I replaced it with the 17" (about 3 yrs old at that time). The Dell is about 5 yrs old, but there was no problem when I hooked it up. 3 days ago, on boot up, the monitor is set at lowest color and resolution. To restore it back to 16 bit color and decent resolution is difficult and may take several tries. (The pointer stays at lowest resolution). This works only for the present session. On next boot up I have to go over everything again. Win tells me the drivers are OK. ???

 

Problems with two monitors in a row would suggest the video card is the problem. Maybe the melt down of the 17" did some damage.

 

I put the monitor on a working sy ste m and the monitor seems ok. Now however, I cannot boot the system at all. I get message that a problem has been detected and windows has shut down to prevent damage to my computer. Some suggestions were to disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing
Finally, at end of message was tech info:
STOP: 0X0000007E(0XC0000005, 0X00000000, 0XF96B4934, 0XF96B4634).

I got this as a refurbished machine for next to nothing, so don't feel it owes me anything. It has integrated graphics. Would a PCI video card bypass the original set up?
Is this worth any more effort or should I get a new computer? Thanks

 

As Newt says, probably the graphics card. I would load some current drivers for the onboard graphics even though windows says all is OK. Set the monitor refresh rate to low (say 72Hz) You can increase it to say 85Hz and try if all is OK at 72.
If still no improvement go with a cheap AGP card IF the motherboard supports it as the price difference will be little (if any) and AGP is noticeably faster than PCI for graphics. Before purchasing I would borrow a compatible card and drivers (or download the appropriate drivers) and try before buying.
Check your motherboard documentation and the BIOS set-up to see if you need to disable onboard video when installing an external one. Some motherboards do and some don't.

 

I did put in a new video card and it did not make any difference. I thought that maybe reinstalling the OS might help. I have a Hewlett Packard recovery disk which basically puts you back to the day you received the computer (Win 98 OS). As a Win 98 system, everything was hunky dory and the monitor problems had all disappeared! So, I tried to bring myself back to Win XP. However, when I tried to install WinXP, either as an upgrade or a new install, I got messages during the installation process that certain files. e.g., comct132.dll, oembios.bin, sstext3d.scr, could not be found. I even got a message that the XP image was not valid and that I did not have the correct installation disk. I have only had the disk (which is legal) about 8 months and I have reinstalled the OS about 3 times, all without difficulty, the last time about 3 months ago. The disk looks clean and has never been out of my control. As a consequence, I cannot boot from XP. I get a message that the program has been stopped to prevent damage to my computer. Then I tried to load Win2000. I cannot do that either. For Win2K, I cannot get past set up examining my disk. It starts, then hangs. As a Win98 machine, it is working absolutely fine in every respect. Any thoughts out there?

 

Doesn't look like anyone is reading these later posts, but in case someone is, here is a final resolution. I had done a number of what i thought were "clean" installs, but apparently they weren't clean enough. I found an old Win98 start disk, used it to format. Then, I put in the XP installation disk, and let it format as NTwhatever. The XP installation went seamlessly thereafter. It is now the old XP machine I had in December when all of this stuff started.

 

shawdaifu - thanks for posting back with your fix.

Chances are the thread was read but that no one had ideas. It is showing 58 reads.