huge window-corupted OS

[bozo]

I am trying to fix a buddies computer. He has a Gateway PIII 866, running windows 98SE. When system boots, the top half of the screen seems normal with usual icons present. The botom half of the screen is all garbled. No tray is present at the bottom. If I click on the bottom or try to size it down, a huge verticle window appears. If I drag the window up (takes several drags to get to the bottom) the bottom shows three huge icons that are usually in the tray. By right licking on any of those icons, another huge verticle window will open. On top, where the normal icons are, I try to open My Computer, and only a outline of a window appears. I can quess where the close button is and close the outline. I cannot navigate to the control panel, or device manager. I first thought the problem might be the vidio card, so I removed the card and ran the monitor off the onboard vidio port and got the same results. There is very little navigation. ALT,CTRL,DELETE will restart and i am able to get to the bios. I can't see anything wrong in the bios, but there might be something I am missing. I have limitted knowledge of what led up to this problem. They said they were attempting to upgrade a sound card and thought that may have caused it, but i have removed the card for troubleshooting. There is a younster that uses this computer and he may have inadvertantly selected something to cause this problem. My buddie contacted Gateway ( it is still under warrenty), but they blew him off since he installed the sound card they said that voided the warrenty-way to go Gateway, I won't be buying my next computer from you and neither will he. Does anybody have any sugestions to try? Does this sound like it may be caused by a virus? Any help appreciated.
Thanks Larry

[RayH]

Perhaps the display settings are set higher than the monitor will support.

[bozo]

I can get to display settings, and they are set to the lowest (640x480) setting, which brings another up point, I cannot change the display setting at all. I try to drag the slider over, & it stays on the lowest setting. Also in the "colors" box, there are only two options; 2 colors, & 16 colors. There used to be more options for colors prior to this problem

[Sauron]

Go into safe mode. I would also try installing the OS again.

[Sauron]

Also, your video card might not be installed correctly.

[Rick Hall]

Install or re-install the video drivers

[Cricket]

Hi bozo,

The problem does seem to be driver related, but doing a full virus scan with updated definitions wouldn't hurt.

Is the on-board video disabled when the video card is installed? What video card is it? What sound card is installed? Did they disable the on-board sound?

Have you tried going into Safe Mode? If the problem remains while you're in Safe Mode, it isn't a driver problem. It may be badly corrupted system files or a hardware problem.

If you can into Safe Mode and everything seems okay, go into Device Manager and check to see if there are lots of duplicate entries for the video adapter. Remove them all and reboot the system. Also run Scandisk and Defrag while in Safe Mode.

How old is that installation of Windows? Does he have lots and lots of programs installed? Windows will degrade after awhile and a reinstalling the OS is usually the only way to get things running smoothly again...especially if some of the system files get corrupted. He might have to try and save as much of his own personal data files and then restore the system with the Gateway CD. If he does this, he has to put the system back to the stock configuration...no upgrades.

Did your friend mention having a really bad system crash recently?

:) Cricket

[bozo]

I have not went to safe mode, but I will try that tomorrow. As far as the vidio card it was installed by Gateway prior to his purchase and did work correctly since they bought it. The OS was installed by Gateway also, and there system is 9-10 months old. so thats how long the OS has been in operation. No re-installs of OS since theybought it I could not get to device manager to update drivers. or to delete them & reboot. I will try that in safe mode. To get to safe mode, I must click on f8 while booting up correct? He does not have many programs installed, just a few games mainly, no critical data, so the idea of using Gateways recovery disk may be the answer. I did not try that, but he said he did try the recovery disk & it didn'd work. but I may be able to do that as a last resort
. I won't get back to his system until tomorrow. He did not mention any bad crashes, but he may have one that I don't know about.
thanx for the replies