Settings changed on desktop

A friend of mine is running windows98 on a Dell system.The icons on the desktop magically got bigger.His background on the desktop changed as did the font size of the web pages he views.I fixed the background and made the font smaller by using ctrl + [ .Before I changed this I was looking at his display properties and everything was normal.It stayed "fixed" for a few days but now everything is enlarged again.Any suggestions on a permanant fix and/or a cause of this?Any help would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance.

 

Maybe the vidio card needs replacing - is this a 98 or 98SE Dell ?
regards

 

win98......how or when do you know if its a video card problem?Is it a "when all else fails" solution?

 

When strange alterations take place in the video display, especially with screen resolution, 95% of the time it's caused by the video drivers getting corrupted in some manner. The other 5% is the video card itself.

Reinstalling the video drivers sometimes cures the problem. If that doesn't do it, downloading a new set of drivers from the video card's manufacturer's web site usually cures it.

Perhaps your friend downloaded driver updates from Microsoft's Windows Update site. I don't know what MS does to drivers but they cause problems more often than not.