Help! Screen / Display messes up once windows boots

[WakeSnow]

I recently reformatted my old computer. Everything went smoothly. I installed a number of applications and everything looked fine. Then I moved it to a new location and switched the monitor. I now have an old Pac Bell Monitor. The boot screens look good and the Windows XP Welcome Screen also looks good. However once the desktop and start menu appear the screen becomes messed up and shows like 4 of everything. Each icon repeats 4 times as well as the start menu. The display is just wacked out. Anyone have any suggestions?

The computer is a 4-5 year old Compaq with an Athlon processor. The video card is a geforce 2 / 64 mb
256 Ram. It used to work fine with the old monitor.

Also I hooked the bad monitor up to a brand new computer with Windows XP and it worked fine. I have no idea what to do but I dont have a spare monitor lying around to replace this one. Please Help!

Thanks,
Nick

 

[wfbberzerker]

try reseating the video card.

 

[WakeSnow]

Reseating as in taking it out and then putting it back in?

 

[wfbberzerker]

Originally posted by: WakeSnow
Reseating as in taking it out and then putting it back in?

yes. turn off computer, unplug monitor, take out video card and put it back in.

edit: and then hook everything else up, if you couldn't figure that part out on your own

 

[WakeSnow]

I did that and still no luck, the screen still does the same thing. Any other suggestions?

 

[wfbberzerker]

can you try a different video card in this computer?

 

[WakeSnow]

The only other video card I have is my 6800 gt and I dont think I want to move it if I can avoid it. I noticed on the cable hook up on the monitor it does not have as many pins as there are holes in the socket on the video card. Could that be the case or is this normal.

 

[WakeSnow]

Turns out I had to hit f8 before windows booted to bring up the menu with Safe mode. On that menu is an option to "Enable VGA mode" Once I did that everything was fixed!

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: WakeSnow
Turns out I had to hit f8 before windows booted to bring up the menu with Safe mode. On that menu is an option to "Enable VGA mode" Once I did that everything was fixed!

The original symptoms sounded like the monitor couldn't handle the refresh rate it was being fed. You may want to go ahead and drop the resolution and refresh rate to 800 x 600 @ 60Hz and then reboot. Once it's rebooted you can try a higher refresh rate to reduce flicker (my little sister's ca. 1994 PB monitor can handle 72Hz, for example). If the settings result in wacky display, wait 15 seconds without doing anything and it'll revert.