Bad Video Card?

Win 98SE, AMD 2200+, 768MB DDR 400, Radeon 7500 128MB Video Card (dual monitor).

I purchased the above video card last August. For no appearent reason I started having the following problem.

This happens regardless of which photo program I use (Adobe, Microsoft, Kodak, Corel, et.). Also, regardless of the source (scanner, digital camera, hard drive, floppy, CD, et.).

The photo I place in the work-area appears somewhat taller and more narrow that real life. Rotating it 90 degrees makes it way out of visual specs, ie much shorter and wider than real life. Checking the photo size always gives the correct size and it also prints the correct size.

In an attempt to correct this I OKed a command to set all video settings to default and restarted my computer. While I get the standard Windows image and sound I have no desktop icons or bar at the bottom (START, tray, clock, et.). Thus I can not use this computer for anything at the time being.

Thoughts?

 

Hi cs

What I would try:
(First, if you can't get the taskbar back you may have to run Windows setup...after backing up your data).
There may be some corrupt files regarding your Video. If you were to start in Safe Mode and view the pictures it would point to drivers. Remember that you will only be able to see a resolution of 640x480 and 256 colours, but look for the distortion.
If the distortion is gone then I would remove the drivers (check in Add/Remove Programs for listings regarding your video, then "remove" in Device Manager). Check for updated drivers and have them ready to load.
If you have monitor drivers listed in the Display settings try changing them to standard Plug and Play.

When checking in Safe Mode the distortion still appears it would probably point to a hardware problem...video or monitor. You could try swapping them for others if you can.

May as well ask...have you checked the monitor setiings?

Matt

 

Whole problem is related to 2 factors - screen resolution and refresh rate. Doubt if there is anything wrong with your video card.

 

Let me be sure I expressed myself well before (I'm not always good at this). Only the photo in the work area is distorted. All else (toolbars, headers, any picture on the net, everything but the work area) is just fine. Even the pictures in the "hold photo" area of Adobe Photo Deluxe (on the left side) look fine. There is no distortion anywhere when not using a photo program. Does this make a difference in your reconmendation?

 

Yes it does make a difference and a big difference at that. You should have some kind of an option or preference setting that you can manually set within the software to correct this. Unfortunately, I'm not the one to tell you how because I don't know this software.

You threw me off with

Perhaps the webmaster wants to move this to the applications (Other Software) forum.