Please help! Everything got huge!

okay this is a strange problem. my sound has not been working as of late (whenever it tries to play a sound i get an error message saying the soundcard is already in use) but sometimes if i turn my computer off and back on it will work. well i tried to fix my sound by doing this but when i turned my computer back on, it acted as if this was my first time turning it on. it had me make a user name and go through internet wizard and everything. everything from my hard drive is here. but my only realy problem is that everything (icons, windows, text) is huge and all graphic images look pixelated and only made of 16 colors. can anyone help me get all my colors back and everything down to normal size? any help would be much appreciated. either reply here or e-mail me at JediX606@fuse.net

 

Did you do a proper shutdown or just shut it off?
Did scandisk run, and report that it fixed errors?
Did you get a prompt about restoring the registry?
Right click on the Desktop and choose Properities, click on Settings tab. Choose the Colors Settings. If at this point all you see is '16 Colors' ,and no '256 Colors' or 'High Color' or 'True Color', you have lost your video drivers. But if you do see these or others choose the color setting you want. Then choose your resolution, it will say Screen Settings there.
If all you see is '16 Colors', go into Control Panel\System, click on Device Manager, Remove the Video Adaptor by clicking on the + sign next to it and delete everything under it. Reboot and let it install the video drivers.
If nothing has changed, you will need to know what your video card is, get the drivers for it, and install them.
As the errors that scandisk corrected may have been your video drivers disappearing as they were corrupted, your password file already was. I have a feeling some of your installed programs are no longer installed.

 

you're right on my installed programs not being installed. in fact i think you're all around right on the ball. thing is, i tried to delete the drivers and restart my computer but it didn't work. so now i need to know where i can get the driver. the thing under the video adapter section says "Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA)" is that my video card? your help is very very much appreciated by the way

 

The "Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA)" is a generic video driver that windows uses when the right one is unknown.
You need to physically remove your video card from the computer and look for a name or ID number on the card. Once you know this you will be able to install the correct driver for it.

Sometimes the card information is displayed on the screen at bootup. if you are quick you can ID it there.

or:

Open a DOS window (go to Start, Run and type command and hit Ok),
then, at the prompt type debug and hit enter.

Your normal prompt will go away. Now type D C000:0040
(those are zeros, not the letter O) and hit enter.
You should see information regarding your video card on the
right side of the screen.

If it's meaningless, hit D and enter again.

After you find your video card information, hit Q and enter to get your prompt back, then type exit to close the DOS window.

Once you know what video card you have, you can go to the manufacturer's website to find drivers for the thing.

 

okay when i did the MS DOS prompt thing it said "3?.'............ 2000/07/18 00:30.....<p..1p..........................ATI RAGE SD RAM BIOS P/N 113_72301-100 ...(c) 1988-1999, ATI" i figured this is what you meant by might be meaningless so i hit d again and this is what came up...

"Technologies Inc.BK4.3.04/4.328 x1723.01 mlv611 .MACH64GRPCIMTSRUN8..J................... .....'......g......................BB.. "


Does that make any sense? is that what i needed to find? what should i do now?

 

Cool, you did good right off the bat. The first part was what was needed, it wasn't meaningless.
You have an ATI Rage video card. I tried using the BIOS Part number and came up blank at the ATI webpage. But go to the link below and get the ATI Adaptor Utilities download and it will positively identify your card.
http://mirror.ati.com/support/identify/atiinfo.html
You can then return to this other link and get the drivers for it.
http://mirror.ati.com/support/driver.html
It seems to be one of the ATI Rage 128 Pro Series. Post what the utility comes up with if confused.

 

I am still a little bit confused. i downloaded the ATI Utilities thing and i ran the Adapter Info Program but I don't see anything on there that is also on the downloadable drivers. it says my Graphics Chipset (ASIC) is ATI GTC and the BIOS/PIN is 133--7230-1-1. at the top on the tab it says "RAGE XL PCI" so i'm not exactly sure what driver to download? does the information provided make sense to you?

 

Hello Jedi

Was browsing through and thought I might be able to help as I've been doing alot of driver searching lately. I followed the link for the driver too and didn't see what you were looking for either. Found one here that might work for you. It's about halfway down the page. Good luck.

 

hello noahdfear. thank you for you help. however, that driver (i'm assuming you mean the RAGE XL one) didn't work. i downloaded it an unzipped it but during the driver set up it told me that it was not compatible with display adapters installed on my system. do you know what this means? as you can probably tell i'm completely mundane about computers.

 

http://www.ati.com/support/products/pc/ragexl/win98/ragexlwin98drivers.html
I believe you want is listed as the Alternate Drivers 4.13.2655, as they are updated to be used with DirectX 8.1. This link will take you to two or three pages until you actually get to download, make sure it has the number above, it is about 10 mb.
You can find out the version of DirectX by going to Start\Run, type in Dxdiag and press Enter, it will say on the opening screen near the bottom. Note: when running DxDiag and the screen flashes off and on, this is normal.
This file may auto install the drivers for you, I do not know for sure as my video card is completely different. Good luck and have a good one.

 

Alright! thank you guys so much! my display is all back to normal now!

the only problem i still have is that my sound doesn't work at all.

here's the error message i get when i try to play an mp3.

Winamp2 waveOut plug-in v1.03 error

No sound devices found. Please buy a soundcard first (or install proper drivers if you think that you have one)
More info can be found at http://www.geocities.com/mmsystem002/

Error code: 2
Windows error message:
"MMSYSTEM002 A device ID has been used that is out of range for your system"


The problems seem to never end, do they?

can you guys help me with that?

 

You need to open the case of your computer and look at your sound card, you may need to pull it out to get a good look at it. You are looking for the make and model number, and/or the FCC ID number, this will be printed on the card. Remember, before you take it out, there is a Phillips head ***** holding it in.
If you have on onboard sound card, it cannot be taken out, you will need to look for the motherboard make and model number, or post the make and model of your computer.
Would you look in Windows Explorer in the folder C:\Windows\Sysbckup, it is a Hidden folder so you will need to set Windows Explorer to Show All Files under View\Folder Options to see it. Look for files named Rb00x, and post back the earliest and latest dates of those files.
Edit: I use a word innocently, and look what happened. Maybe this will work in place of the asterisks, not a bolt but a ?????.