Messed up desktop settings

[pdeinc]

My dad was cleaning his mouse while the PC was running and somehow messed up his desktop or graphic card settings. He of course can't remember what the message was he clicked on or anything like that. Plus he's 100 miles from here so I can't run over and have a look.

From what he tells me, the screen is either blank or has random horizontal lines, no desktop icons, no mouse cursor. During boot, everything appears as it's going ok, Win98 logo appears as before, but then nothing. It will boot into safe mode fine. It's an older pentium (333?) with a trident VGA card.

I did have him look at the C:\Windows directory and tell me what files were modified most recently but that didn't shed any light on the problem.

Any ideas for long distance diagnostics?

[brad]

You could have him go into "Device Manager" in Safe Mode and "Remove" the Video Card. Then reboot and should detect and reinstall it.
brad

[liljim]

Sounds like he set his resolution higher than what the monitor is capable of.You can "guess" at setting it back using the keyboard but i dont know how to begin to explain that aggervating process.If no one else has a better solution,i would boot in safe mode and go to device manager.Remove the video card and reboot normally.It should see the card and reinstall with the default video settings.

[liljim]

Brad beat me to it..

Thats what dialup will get ya

[pdeinc]

Gave that a try - on first boot after removal, system finds display adapter and completes boot into windows with setting of 640 x 480 & 16 colors and states that to finish installing, PC must reboot again.

On second reboot display is back to hosed - some setting apparently is returning to the incorrect value set when he first screwed it up. That is, unless screwing the setting the first time has damaged the monitor or display adapter, but I can't see that if they both work in lower modes of resolution and color.

If he chooses not to reboot again, there are no other options for the display and color and device manager shows a yellow exclamation point on the display adapter and states installation not complete, needs to reboot.

[brad]

[pdeinc]

Based on what he's told me, I've have to say no. The message in the properties window from the device manager says something about installation was not completed, PC must be rebooted to finish. The card is a Diamond S3, I've sent him another but really don't expect that to fix the problem.

Correct me if I'm wrong (boy, is that statement unnecessary in a forum), but aren't you limited to display settings that the adapter is capable of when configuring the desktop, whereas you can enter settings that the monitor is not capable of?

[brad]

That depends. If the "drop down" box, in Display Properties / Settings Tab, shows an adaptor that isn't installed, then I guess you could set it to something the current adaptor can't do..
What adaptor shows in that "drop down" box?
brad

[liljim]

[pdeinc]

Brad I can't say for sure about the adapter but based on what has transpired so far, I would guess only the S3 adapter. I don't remember that any other one has ever been in the PC and since he started this by clicking what I presume was a display setting on the desktop, a fair assumption is that he's picked a resolution the monitor doesn't support. Altho I'm not quite sure why that results in a totally hosed display, not just the wrong size. I would expect a wrong refresh rate to more likely screw up the display in this manner.

liljim, that's a good idea, he has another much newer computer in his home as well. I'll suggest he try that.

PS Looking back I see I'm assuming that it was a display setting he inadvertantly modified, are there other possibilities if one were mucking with the mouse and not paying attention?

[liljim]

The most likely cause is the resolution being set to high.Have him turn it down and set the refresh rate to optimal.

[brad]

The "Drop down" box on both of my Win98's also contains the "Default Monitor". If I select it, I can only select 640 x 480 & 16 colors. Maybe it's been selected on his.
brad

[pdeinc]