I got a computer from my mother in law that had a virus so I had to reformat it. I did the reformat myself and loaded Win98 on it and everything is fine except the picture. It will not show more than 16 colors and the screen size stays regular, can't go past the base setting. The computer somewhat worked and the video was great, now it sucks. How do I fix this? It won't even pull up what kind of display adaptor it is under properties in the device manager. How do find out what type it is, is it engraved in the card?
2006-09-15 13:59:21 · 8 answers · asked by Shanigirl 4 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Monitors
It's usually in the documentation provided with the computer. If you don't have that, look on the card, particularly if you see anything saying "ATI" or "Nvidia". Those are the two big video card manufacturers. Alternatively, you can simply try to download the drivers from ATI or Nvidia and hope they work, you pretty much have a 50% chance, and you can always uninstall them later. Download drivers for the ATI Radeon series ( www.ati.com ) and Nvidia Geforce series ( www.nvidia.com ).
2006-09-15 14:05:17 · answer #1 · answered by jalexxi 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I take it you do know what's the rest: install the driver given the type and model number of the card you have.
Some companies engrave that model number and type on the card circuit surface; some put a model # and type on a sticker attached to the surface.
In a rare event that such sticker falls away from the board already; if convenient to do so get a friend to recognize the board visually. If still cannot, a one line descriptive line do exist in hardware standard but Windows don't expose that line and opt to say "Standard VGA Adapter" get a Live running on CD version of Linux and run "scanpci" to expose such hardware information in either PCI or AGP card.
2006-09-15 21:10:58 · answer #2 · answered by Andy T 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Your best bet is to pull it out of the system and write down everything that remotely looks like a model number, part number, brand name, etc etc. Then start entering the numbers you find in a search engine until you get a hit that looks close. Get a little more information from there and enter it in turn in a search engine. Usually you can get a used parts listing off a part number which indicated make and model. From there you can get enough information to find the web site for the card maker. They should have the drivers there. Alternatively, once you have the card information you can usually find a driver at driverguide.com !
2006-09-15 21:07:13 · answer #3 · answered by Interested Dude 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
You erased the drivers for your video card.
Youll need your windows 98 install disk:
Put it in, go to the device manager and right click on your unknown video device -> install
point it to where your Win98 cd is
Restart
2006-09-15 21:05:51 · answer #4 · answered by Apocalypse 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You will need to re-install the video driver. In order to ensure there is no corruption, you may want to boot the computer into Safe Mode and uninstall the existing video driver (unless it's uninstalled already). After rebooting, you'll want to download the most current video driver from the manufacturers website and install it.
2006-09-15 21:06:09 · answer #5 · answered by salamander_mn 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
you need to install the driver of the video card .. if you don't know the name of the card, check the card itself .. usually the name of the company and the model is written on the card surface
2006-09-15 21:03:00 · answer #6 · answered by Luay14 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Try the free program Belarc Advisor and see if it will bring up what type of video card you have,so you can get your correct drivers.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Belarc_Advisor_d1385.html
2006-09-15 21:07:06 · answer #7 · answered by jibberjabar 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
What they said.
2006-09-15 21:07:21 · answer #8 · answered by K W 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋