Monitor resizing woe

Gordon

Hello.

A mate of mine has a windows 98 computer and somehow managed to resize his screen. It became warped in that everything squished horizontally to about half the width - hence making text vertically long.
I'm not a complete novice on windows so I tried 2 things to fix it:

1) I changed the monitor itself to unsquish the horizontal
2) I changed the screen settings to a smaller size or a larger size to see if it made a difference.

What happens is - when I am on massive screen size on windows (everything is really big [sorry, forgotton what res]). So I fix the monitor to make the screen unsquished. Everything is now perfect although really big.

I now reduce (or increase maybe) the resolution to make the icons/fonts/windows etc smaller. If I do this the screen is still squished horizontally. I go to the monitor to stretch it horizontally but I can't any more because it is at maximum horizontal stretch.

I can only summise that there is something afoot with the resolution/graphics card or something. I am going to check with another monitor to see if it is the monitor's fault but I have a feeling it isn't.

Blah blah blah.
If anyone has suffered such a woe, could they help me out pretty please?

Thanks if possible.

The Muppet

Have you changed the refresh rate. Also some video drivers are configurable and someonemay have been messing with this. I would delete the driver and reinstall it again to see if that helped.

Gordon

OK I'll check that out - thanks Muppet!

BoB_BoT

doesn't sound like a monitor fault, quickest way to fix something like that is to remove the graphics drivers (make sure you have them on a disk somewhere first) in safe mode, reboot normally and windows should redetect the graphics card, when done try resizing again.

OfflerCrocGod

How about returning the monitor to factory settings there is usually an option in the OSD menu...... It's probably not the monitor but it's worth a shot.

Gordon

Thanks again... umm... where would I find the drivers incidentally?

sorry

nokomis

Hi

The font size and resolution are two separate settings. In your Control Panel you will see an icon called Display. Click on that and there are settings to change the resolution (as you have already seen) but also a setting to resize the font from Large Font to Normal to Small. I think it's on the Appearance tab. Try that and see what result you get.

spoofer

Whoa!!!
Hold on. Before you rush around trying different settings please try this:
Start windows in safe mode (press F5 when you see Windows 98 on the top left of the screen as it boots. Do not wait until the windows logo).
The res in safe mode is 640 x 480.
Does this work ok?
If so, while in safe mode change the settings to default and re-boot.
If you get a bad picture in safe mode then it is probably the video card but if you like try another monitor to confirm.

nokomis

Originally posted by spoofer
Whoa!!!
Hold on. Before you rush around trying different settings

it's only a wee font change, easy-peasy to set it back! One click of a dropdown.

I'd do that before tinkering around with hardware drivers, or starting in safe mode. That is already presuming you've a driver problem, which may not be the case at all!!

BoB_BoT

okies try this (if the font and icons are just too big). Change the windows schemes. Open up your display settings, click "appearance" tab and choose a scheme that doesn't say (big) in brackets (set it to windows standard), that's more than likely your problem. Next up click "effects" tab and make sure the large icons box is unclicked.

If that fails find your graphics drivers (more than likely with the pcs backup disks) or failing that download them from the net. To find out your graphics card make go to control panel->system->device manager->display adaptor, click the + and it will say what make card is in the machine

Gordon

Cool, thanks for all your replies, I'm sure something here must do the trick. I'll print this out for use when I get back to the machine.

Will let you know who the winner is!

Gordon

Gah! Silly computers!

Does anyone have a Windows 98 3dFX Voodoo 3 install file? As usual the install disk isn't to be found. I tried downloading the updated driver from the Windows update but it still asks me for the voodoo disk. If this is against the board rules, apologies.

BoB_BoT

gordon, you can get the drivers for 3dfx cards here www.guru3d.com

gl,
Rob

Capt'n Midnight

If it had been half the height I'd say you were overdriving the monitor..

Check the controls on the monitor first..

Again check the refresh rate - what is the monitor type iin Device manager - if it is the wrong type or if it just says PnP then delete it (monitor - NOT the video driver) and then click on refresh - it should redetect the monitor as PnP....

Gordon

Thanks muchly, if a friend of the PC owner doesn't manage to get it to work with his voodoo install disks I'll try the website Bob_bot gave me then tinker with those other settings....

Thanks everyone for your help.