windows 98se pixles and color

[scienceguymi]

I recently reinstalled windows 98 se on my labtop after re formating the h/d. I went thrught and installed alot of softwair and drivers. I have run into two main problems. One I cant change my pixles from 480x640 to 600x800 it wont even let me move the meter in display properties/settings! I dont know why. previously i had 600x800 pixles on this computer. also i cant change my color settings from 16 bit color to a better one like 256 color. Im stuck with 16 bit color whitch isint too apeling, my only optsion is 2 bit color and that is not any better. any idea how i can fix thease problems? if you need any more informatsion then please tell me.

[yellohut]

there are two things it could be...
one is that the wrong drivers are installed.

are you sure you installed the correct drivers for your video chip?

the opther is that the wrong adapter is being used.

right click on my computer then go to properties.
click on the device manager tab
then click on the display adaptors

how many are listed, and what does it say?

if it says "default adaptor" then you need to install the drivers.

[scienceguymi]

under display adapters it listes "standard pci grafics adapter (VGA)" there is not an explinatsion point or markigs on it that would show it had the wrong drivers so im asuming it has the wright drivers. here is a link to a picture of the menu. http://community.webshots.com/script...ecurity=amAVsN

[Redo40]

You need to install the graphics driver. The standard graphics adapter is windows generic driver and will not let you set the resolution above 480x640.

[yellohut]

what make and model laptop is it?
if we can figure out what graphics chip it has, then we can point you to the correct drivers.

[scienceguymi]

bad link heres good one http://community.webshots.com/photo/...98249084amAVsN

i have a think pad 560z

[Redo40]

You need to be sure on the model.

560z display driver

[GaryRouth]

Here's a link from which you can download the drivers you need for your 560z. You'll especially want to install the video, sound, and pointer drivers.

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/dlsearc...93&Submit.y=12

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[Edit - Hi Roger - looks like I'm a-typing kinda slooooww again today ]

[scienceguymi]

ok i have another problem, i go and the driver updates fine but before it finished it askes for the win98 cd. i dont have a floppy or c drive what can i do?

[GaryRouth]

I'll guess you meant to say that you don't have a floppy or a cd drive? on the notebook. . . and that you do have a hard drive with the drive letter C assigned to it.

At the point where the win98 cd is asked for, is there a "browse" button? If so, click on it and point to C:\Windows\Options\cabs [if this is the location you reinstalled Windows from]

If there is no option to point the installation somewhere else, you could modify a Registry setting to no longer point to a non-existent cd, but to your hard drive. Then at that point in your driver install, Windows will be able to find the files on the hard drive.

The Registry key that Windows uses to find the installation files is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Setup . . . in regedit, click on the folder icon for"Setup". You'll see keys displayed in the window pane to the right. One of the keys will say "SourcePath". Click on that key to highlight/select it. Then from the Edit menu in the toolbard, select Modify, and replace the D:/Win98/ with the location of your installation files - probably C:/Windows/Options/Cabs. If you are unsure about editing the Registry, don't. Read the Help files or get someone to help you. The Help files also tell how to make a backup beforehand to be extra safe [though, truthfully, Windows makes a backup copy automatically at boot-time, which you can rollback to with the scanreg/restore command]. . . This is a fairly easy and painless change as far as Registry edits go.

If this isn't clear, let me know
. . . Gary

[...I'm surprised that the ThinkPad doesn't have a floppy drive . . . it ships with one originally (it's an external drive: it's special cable plugs into a port on the side). How did you reformat & reinstall Win98 without a floppy or cd in the first place? (different partitions?) . . .]

[scienceguymi]

i order to reinstall windows i entered dos and f disked everything, then i took the HD out of the laptop and hooked it up to my desktop with a HD adapter. i used the desk top cd drive to install windows. the problem is that while hooked up to the desktop the unrecignsed components dont show up in the device manager, they only apear while using the laptop.

[yellohut]

the unrecognized components don't show up in the desktop because you are either not booting from that disk, or you have the proper drivers installed for the desktop.

when you put the disk in the laptop it finds all the hardware associated with the laptop (components on the motherboard, modem, network, video) and it can't find the drivers for them.

when it comes to the display drivers, windows will load a generic one that will work with all displays. but with the generic one you can't change the resolution, or color mode.

when you try to install the drivers, and it asks you to insert the windows 98 cd, it will ask you to insert it into a particualr drive.... a box will pop up that says "please insert the windws 98 cd" and will have a box with (usually) "d:\"

just erase the d:\ and type in "c:\windows\system" without the quotes. if that doesn't work then type "c:\windows\cabs" without the quotes.

let me know if this works.

[scienceguymi]

i tried bolth of those and with each when i click "ok" the insert windows 98 disk screen flashes for a secont and then comes back up.

[rambler]

The real problem is that you haven't actually got a W98 installation for your laptop, but for the desktop, as yellohut has deduced. I'd suggest re-attaching the laptop drive to the desktop, and copy everything on the CD to a new folder ("W98" say) on the laptop drive. It's what I often do when installing an O/S anyway - saves time if a reinstall is needed. In explorer, use "edit/select all" on the CD, and drag the block of files/folders to the new folder on C:. You can then point the driver installs to the "W98/Win98" folder for the drivers. If this fails, boot the laptop with a W98 bootdisk, and run c:\W98\win98\setup from the command prompt to do a full install. This might well be quicker in the long run.

[GaryRouth]

I think rambler is pointing you in the right direction.

If you copy the .cab files over to a directory on the hard drive, you can then try the "Enum Trick" - which will help remove the drivers leftover from your desktop and let Windows detect and install only the laptop ones. When installing the laptop drivers, use a combination of the drivers from the IBM site, and the system files Win98 asks for [this is where you'd point to your copied .cab files]. [the EnumTrick is down in the Tips & Tricks forum: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9254 ]

I'd also recommend a run of RegClean when you're done, since your bound to have some unwanted leftovers. RegClean 4.1 was updated to work well with Win98se http://download.com.com/3000-2094-881470.html?tag=list
- The directions for RegClean are in the ReadMe.txt file.

That should pretty much get you to the finish line.

They do have those floppy drives available used from time to time on eBay. It's best to know what part number works with your model (I couldn't find a parts number list when I looked briefly). An ethernet notebook card might make life with that older model more flexible, too.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[yellohut]

OK, now this may seem crazy... but try this..

hook up the laptop HDD to the Desktop again. Format it.
Then pretend the laptop is a floppy drive and make it a windows98 boot disk. (for help on this you can go to www.bootdisk.com)
then boot with a boot disk (still on the desktop side of things) and put the windows98 cd in the cd drive.
while in dos browse to the laptop hard drive and type "mkdir win98" without the quotes. then browse to the cd drive and type "copy d:\win98\*.* c:\win98" without the quotes (assuming that d:\ is your hard drive and c:\ is our laptop HDD, adjust these letters as needed.

when that is finished hook the laptop drive back up to the laptop and turn it on.. it should boot into dos. then type "cd win98" and it will take you to the windows 98 directory. from there type "setup.exe" and it should install windows.

let me know if this works, because it should as far as I can tell.

[GaryRouth]

science - any luck yet? I'm especially curious to hear if you tried yellowhut's idea, which I haven't seen before. I'll have to give that one a try myself sometime, just because it'd be a handy option to have around.
. . . Gary