I apologize if this has already been discussed, but I’m presently having a lot of trouble navigating forumosa due to the computer guy in our office, who is always changing things on my machine, without my request, usually just making things worse. This morning I came in to the office and found he fucked with my machine over the weekend so I can start the new year frustrated. As a result of whatever he did the resolution on my monitor is changed: the font is larger and rougher. I preferred the smaller but cleaner font. But worse yet, due to the changed resolution, I can no longer view the whole width of many websites (including forumosa and hotmail) on one screen, but must slide the screen back and forth to read it. :fume:
He tells me there’s nothing that can be done to remedy it – that if you use the larger font resolution, the whole site won’t fit on the screen. Period. He’s wrong (again) isn’t he?
Compounding my problem is the fact that I’ve got Chinese Windows in the office and I can’t read Chinese, so I can’t try to figure it out but must rely on his, or your, sage advice.
Thanks for the suggestion. It made things wiggle, but it’s all still too big to fit in the screen (I even tried beyond M, putting it on the extreme smallest setting to no avail). I don’t know what he did (he is incapable of speaking English, only tech-talk), or why (I wasn’t having any problems and didn’t request his “help”), but I believe he said my computer should be faster now, except that the VGA card is old, which I believe he was suggesting might cause a problem.
He’s such a numbskull, every time he touches my computer he makes things worse. Then when I inquire how to remedy his mess he acts puzzled and hurt that I don’t appreciate his assistance. Looks like I may work on the laptop till he gives me back my old computer.
MT, bring up the desktop, then right click, take the last option, this should be the properties option, then the tab to the far right side, this should allow you if available to change the resolution of the screen
It could be that he upgraded your OS and then found out that there isn’t a driver for you old card for the new OS. Or something else was done that screwed up the video driver. If a driver is not used, Microsoft OSes revert to VGA-only mode which maxes out at 800x600.
First thing, right click on your desktop background and select Properties and then select the Settings tab as Traveller suggested. Down where it says screen resolution, drag it to the right until you get to 1280x1024. If you can’t go beyond 800x600, then the driver is at fault. If you can get it to 1280x1024, then choose that and hit Apply. If your screen goes blank or filled with garbage, don’t do anything. After 30 seconds Windows will figure out it didn’t work and go back to your old resolution. Back off to 1024x768 and try again. When it can resize the resolution hit OK on the box that comes up and you should be set. 1280x1024 is the most common resolution for 17-19" displays and 1024x768 is the most common for 15" or smaller.
Another possibility is to try to reduce the color quality to see if that allows you to use a higher resolution. Older cards have limited memory and can only use lower resolutions with the color quality set to highest.
If you can’t do the above, it’s because you don’t have a video driver loaded. Hit Start, and Control Panel and then click on System. Then find the device manager. On XP it is on the Hardware tab. On older OS it is somewhere else in System, but I don’t remember offhand. Once Device Manager is up, click on the + next to Display Adaptors and see what comes up. If it has a device name there instead of something generic like “VGA Adaptor”, then you know what driver to go look for. It may also be at the bottom of the device manager screen with a question mark in front of the device meaning it isn’t completely configured. If that doesn’t help, go back to Control Panel and hit “Add Hardware” and see if it mentions what kind of video card driver it is looking for.
If you can find out what kind of video card it is, you can go to the manufacturer web site and download a driver from them. Or get your lazy ass tech guy to do it for you.