Can't change from 256 color on my video card in Windows 98SE?

[jyates]

Here's a weird problem. And since there are so many computer tech guru's on here I bet someone
has the answer.

Looking at a friend's computer for him and it has a Diamond Stealth II S220 pci 4mb video card in it.
It's set at 256 color 640 x 480 and I tried to change the settings to 32bit 640 x 480 and it allows me
to drop down the setting window in display properties and select the 32bit and click apply and it asks
me if I want to change the settings without restarting and I say "yes" and it blinks when I click on apply
but it's still set at 256 color. I can say "I want to restart my computer" after making the changes and
it's still stuck on 256 color after the reboot.

I uninstalled the video card and rebooted up and reloaded the drivers again but no change in it's
attitude.

There are a TON of kid's games on there and I'm guessing that maybe one of them has "taken control"
of the video card setting and won't let me change the setting.

Any ideas on how to get the computer to let me change the color and screen area short of formatting
the drive and reinstalling windows 98se?

It's a PII 450 clone machine.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Jim

 

[lobadobadingdong]

My win98 box is dead right now(fried my celeron), but if I remeber right, the first thing I would try is to click Start, Run, msconfig, and click ok. your friends pc may be set up to only run on basic video(i.e. safe mode video drivers), go through these lists and keep anything from loading on startup that he don't need to have load in his taskbar, it's possible one of these may also be causing the problem. Other than that the only thing left I could think of is something screwy in the registry, and no offense, but you probably don't have the experienct to go hacking around in the registry without messing something up, you might fix the problem, but you might introduce even more problems if your not well versed in registry keys.
Hope this helps, but if all else fails, backup his data files, and do a fresh reload of his software, you can test one program install at a time, if the problem comes back, then you'll know which program caused the problem, if it doesn't come back, just count your blessings and let it run.

 

[jyates]

I changed video cards to an AGP card and it would
let me select 32bit color and would stay there but
I noticed some very simple games were hanging up
and some other windows problems. I beleive something
in Windows has corrupted and I'm going to give it a
good formatting and reinstall everything fresh. I can
do that a lot quicker than trouble shooting the problem.

 

[ZakPC]

Whoa!
Before going to the format and reinstall, have you tried removing the video card as a device in the control panel/sytem screen and rebooting to have it re-detected?
Snag the latest drivers while you're at it (before the reboot)

http://www.diamondmm.com/support/di...Graphics&item=drivers&product=Stealth_II_S220

 

[jyates]

Hi,

Yes, I uninstalled the card completely and then reinstalled it completely with the newer drivers and no change....there is something fishy going on....

 

[Jeff7]

Perhaps give Regcleaner a try. Under its Tools menu is a Reset Hardware Configuration option. That clears the registry entries for all hardware so that they can be re-detected by Windows. This is of course a bit risky I'd imagine, as the system will be quite confused when it reboots; and custom IRQ settings might be cleared out as well; and you might need to use the Add New Hardware wizard to find all of the hardware.
It might be good to do the backup before doing this, especially of anything in the Windows and Program Files folders. I say those folders specifically, because back on FAT32-based systems, I would just boot off a bootdisk, and use the deltree command on Program Files and Windows - that would pretty much remove Windows; I get rid of Program Files because most programs in there stick entries all throughout the registry; with it back to defaults with a new Windows install, the programs wouldn't run anyway. Can't do that with my NTFS-formatted WinXP setup here.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

Just curious....how'd everthing turn out?

 

[jyates]

My friend was ready to do some house cleaning on his system
and I just formatted it totally and did a reinstall of
windows 98se and then it worked fine. There was something somewhere
in all the stuff on the hard drive that wouldn't let the
video card change the colors or screen size. He will load
it up again with all his stuff and we'll see if it happens
again. Maybe this time since he will be looking for it he
will see what the offending program is

Thanks,
Jim