argh! laptop screen stuck in 640x480

[aranandtech]

hello everyone. this is my 1st post here so i hope i'm placing this in the right area.
i just purchased an ibm 600e laptop p2 30 with 10gb hdd and 128meg ram running win98se. its been working well for the past week and i was trying to hook up and external monitor to it 2day but was having some problems requiring me to go into windows safe mode. coming out of safe mode is where my annoying problem started. basically the laptop screen is stuck in 640x480 mode and the display properties slider will not let me adjust it otherwise! b4 going into safemode, i was running the screen at
1024x768 in 24bit colour without a problem. now i'm able to change the color depth screen area is unchangeable.

i've spent the better part of 12 hours reintalling video drivers, going thru net suggestions but nothing seems to work. if anyone can send me some step by steps to check and or point me to a neomagic site with updated drivers i'd be much obliged, the only drivers i seem able to find r from 2000 or earlier.

the only things i can figure out about the video card is that it's a neomagic magicmedia256av 4.12.01.5215-q2.15.01 (taken from the display properties dialog). coupld someone tell me specifically where video card drivers go in win98, so i can do some direct copy and re-placing? if any further info wuld b helpful, please ask and let me know how to get it. getting device infromation has never beena strongpoint 4 me.
any info wuld be greatly appreciated.
thxs!

 

[stingygrrl]

i'm no expert but perhaps the issue is related more to the external monitor than the driver.

once when I hooked up my PC to the TV (via tv-out on the video card) it had to reset teh resolution to the TV's lower rate. I disconnected the TV out but windows wouldn't change the resolution back to the monitor.

I had to disable the external monitor and tell windows (via the ATI software I think) to stop thinking it was going to the TV.

After that, I was able to adjust the resolution back to the higher settings for teh monitor.

hope that makes sense and helps.

 

[jschuk]

First go back into safe mode and delete ALL the video adapters there. You may have to reinstall your video driver once you go back into windows, but most likely it will pickup the driver and re-install it. If you are looking to delete the files, all you need to do it go into the advanced settings of the display properties and click on the adapter tab. You should be able to view the files details there which will list which files are in use. As a last resort, you can delete the "enum" key in the registry, but you will need to reload the drivers for ALL of your hardware after doing that.