Frick, I'm stumped.... video problem

[HAL9000]

Well, my bench machine at work went screwy and it went screwy big time. We sold the video card in our demo machine, so to replace it, the card from my bench machine went in, OK, no problem. I grabbed another card (a cheapie SIS), slapped it in, loaded the correct drivers (I know they are the right ones, I downloaded them myself and had this card running on my bench machine before) and I only get 16 colours. I have the option to go to higher res and colour depth, but it resets back to 16 colour at 640x480 after rebooting. Here is what I have tried so far, not neccessarily in the following order and #13 has been tried repeatedly.

1) 3 different video cards. The SIS, an ATI 32Mb Xpert 2000, and an ASUS GeForce 200MX, all with DX 8.1 and with included and latest drivers.

2) Deleted all different cards showing in device manager while in safe mode.

3) Deleted the ENUM key in the registry and reloaded ALL drivers.

4) Deleted the ENUM key in the registry, rebooted with the WinME CD and reloaded windows over top.

5) Scanned for viruses with Norton 2001 (updated virus defs) and at http://housecall.antivirus.com and came up with nothing

6) Scanned for spyware, found typical stuff with cookies, deleted them as always.

7) Ran the system restore, no change.

8) Manually did a registry restore, no change.

9) Tried SCANREG/FIX, no change

10) Scandisked and defragged, no change

11) Did a clean load on a blank drive. The video cards DO work with the drivers that I have.

12) Manually entered the colour depth and resolution to the registry, rebooted back to 16 colour, 640x480.

13) Swore and cursed the machine, no change.

A shiney new Canadian one dollar coin to the correct answer (****minus postage, exchange, cost of envelope****) to the correct solution :D

[Hpro]

hehehe Hal - I might have the answer for you this has happen to me once before-

START > RUN type MSCONFIG - select normal startup...

[HAL9000]

Hmmm... I'll be kicking myself hard if that's all it is, I'll find out tomorrow when I get to work.

Any other possible suggestions?

[edrod13]

Hal,

I doubt this is your problem but I built a PC not to long ago for my cousin with built in video and was using an older 15" monitor that was MAC/PC compitable. The thing is when I installed the OS and drivers I was using my almost new GEM 17" monitor. When I took the PC to his house with the 15" that I had given him I could only get 16 colors. I would then go into setting and change it to 32bit only to find out it would revert to 16 colors everytime the pc was restarted. I tried just about all I know and a newer 17" monitor fixed the problem. I imagine you have already used this monitor extensively but I just thought I would share this with you. By the way I took this 15" and hooked it up to a 4MB AGP card that was not onboard and it worked fine! go figure!

Edrod13

[archie]

Edrod13 has the same sort of idea that I have ... my guess is that it has to do with the monitor. Change from Plug and Play monitor type or whichever default it is to another setting. I've seen this fix not only that type of problem but also problems where the picture on the monitor could not be centered ... ie the button on the monitor to make the pic go left would not work.

[jayg]

HAL9000,
Here is my two cents worth. Three things to try:

1- Go to run and type msconfig, enter and click on the Advanced tab of the
System Configuration Utility dialog box. Scan the settings choices and make sure that the VGA 640x480x16 is unchecked. If it is cheked even if you change the settings on the Dispaly icon in Control Panel this setting will take precedence.

2- Check to ensure that you don't have a motherboard and card issue.

3- BIOS issues.

Hope this helps!
Let me know if I win the coin

JayG

[HAL9000]

Arch and erod13, make that #14, already tried that and a different monitor.

jayg

#1, checked it, nope, wasn't it

#2, #3 tried a clean install as posted above and all three video cards work fine with the motherboard.

[morriswindgate]

Well, I been up all night at work, but have you checked to see if the standard display adapter is still in the device manager instead of the video card.

[HAL9000]

Yup, covered under #2 ;)

[pointd]

Had the exact same problem recently after flashing a BIOS. Found a set of drivers somewhere between the old ones and the latest ones that work just fine. Worth a try

[HAL9000]

Been there, done that with three different video cards.... screw it, transferring everything I need to another computer through the network and formatting

[Hpro]

Hal - try to find the bug - formatting is to easy..

[HAL9000]

I've been screwing with this thing for three days and I need that machine at work, not to mention 16 colours at a 60Hz refresh is just too hard on my eyes. I don't know about you, but I can still see a flicker at 85Hz, it has to run at 100Hz. At 60Hz it's like staring at a blinking neon sign all day.

I really can't complain. This is the machine that I started for bench testing in 1998. All the hardware has been changed, only the software has remained. It started with Win95, then Win95B over top, Win98 over top, Win98SE over top, WinME over top. Not to mention numerous software installs and uninstalls, scanning for viruses and having a few hop over for the ride. After 4 years, I think it's about time I wipe this thing.

The job is done, all is well, just have to setup the e-mail and transfer my data/utilites back.

[Hpro]

Yes then you have a good reason for it.. I use 100Hz here - same for me with the flicker..

[morriswindgate]

Hal, I was just resolving a Video to Sound conflict on the ATI site when I ran across a mention that NetMeeting would cause problems like this unless you shut Net Meeting completely down prior to making the change, It referred to the fact that Parts of Net meeting run after exiting the program and need to be terminated with extreme violence.

[mike breck]

Hal,

I know you've tried it, but when this happened to me after installing a new video card, I had to download the specific .inf file for the monitor.

It had been working perfectly well with the monitor set to plug and play before
installing the new card and drivers.

[HAL9000]

I don't run netmeeting and already had the monitor INI file.

[pcoopers]

I thought Hal could fix anything, but he cheated on this one.

I go along with the guys who think the monitor was the problem. Seems several of us had similar probs, I finally fixed mine when I forcefully convinced Windows that my monitor was plug-n-play, green peace certified, etc etc, and used regedit to remove all references to 640 x 480 standard adapter.

On second thought, I shoulda done like Hal. It took me about 4 1/2 days to get it working. :D

[HAL9000]

Nah.... it has something to do with screwed up system files somewhere. I even went so far as to manually enter the registry settings and entries, and after a reboot they were either gone, or set back to defaults.

[HAL9000]

Well, finished re-installing all programs and restored all my data to the drive. Total disk usage is now 2683Mb, total usage before I wiped the drive 3377Mb. I would say there was just a little bit of garbage that needed to be cleaned up after 4 years. The registry shrunk down by over 2.5Mb!