Screen resolution changes at startup

[GMD]

Hello,
Hi, I running winXP profesional with a visiontec hd2400 pro video card. A little while ago my wife booted up the computer and it changed the resolution to 640 x 480. I could not change it to any other setting...then it told me that catalyst was not supported by this driver and errors ensued. I have uninstalled the drivers and re-installed. They will work ok for awhile and then it does it again. I don't believe it is the card or computer hadware because after I get it working again it will work fine for days as long as I don't shut it off. If I do it may be fine for up to a couple days then all of a sudden on a bootup it will revert back to 640 x 480 and I have to go through installing the drivers again and it will be ok again for awhile until it decides at a boot up to do it again.

Does anyone have any ideas? This is driving me nuts. Could it be the battery on the motherboard not keeping settings after shutdown? The clock, bios setting ect. don't seem effected so I didn't think so but I'm just about at my wits end.

I appreciate any help anyone can offer.

 

[PhilFrisbie]

Yes, it could be a hardware problem with your video card or monitor. Every time you boot up, XP rechecks for a video card or monitor change. If XP fails to identify your video card or monitor it will default to 640x480 to avoid damaging your monitor.

Here is what you should do:

Open up your case, remove and reinstall the video card.
Then check the video cable connections at the monitor and the video card, and the overall condition of the cable.

If those steps do not help then try another monitor for a few days. I have had a monitor periodically fail to be detected and experienced something similar to your problem. My monitor and video card supported both VGA and DVI and was using a VGA cable. I switched to a DVI cable and the problem went away.

 

[GMD]

Thanks,

I have opened the case and removed the video card. I blew out the dust and looked to see if anything looked bad or smelled burnt or for some other tell tale sign. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

I have not tried another monitor but I will give that a try and see what happens.

thanks

 

[GMD]

Another quick question...if it is a hardware issue with either the monitor or video card failing...why would it revert to normal upon just installing the driver again? I don't do anything at all with unhooking or changing components but by just re installing the driver/catalyst software it will allow me to change the resolution back and get the computer running normal again.

Until I install the driver again I can't change the resolution at all. Is there a site I can go to that has some kind of diagnostic software to put a video card or monitor thorough some tests to see if it is failing?

thanks again

Yes, it could be a hardware problem with your video card or monitor. Every time you boot up, XP rechecks for a video card or monitor change. If XP fails to identify your video card or monitor it will default to 640x480 to avoid damaging your monitor.

Here is what you should do:

Open up your case, remove and reinstall the video card.
Then check the video cable connections at the monitor and the video card, and the overall condition of the cable.

If those steps do not help then try another monitor for a few days. I have had a monitor periodically fail to be detected and experienced something similar to your problem. My monitor and video card supported both VGA and DVI and was using a VGA cable. I switched to a DVI cable and the problem went away.

 

[PhilFrisbie]

Another quick question...if it is a hardware issue with either the monitor or video card failing...why would it revert to normal upon just installing the driver again? I don't do anything at all with unhooking or changing components but by just re installing the driver/catalyst software it will allow me to change the resolution back and get the computer running normal again.

Until I install the driver again I can't change the resolution at all. Is there a site I can go to that has some kind of diagnostic software to put a video card or monitor thorough some tests to see if it is failing?

thanks again

You need to reboot to reinstall the driver, right? Next time just reboot a couple of times and see if it is fixed.

Also, I am not aware of diagnostic software to specifically test the video card and monitor.

 

[GMD]

Yes...It did reboot after the driver install. All was well too. I shut the computer down at the end of the day when we were done with it and it actually booted back up for two days without incident. Then it did it again. All I did at that point was re-run the file to install the driver, it booted and it was all good again.

I have not shut the computer down for 2 days and it runs fine. I'm sure that if I shut it off it will eventually do the same thing again. Maybe not the very next boot but soon.

If the card or the monitor was going bad I was assuming(may be wrong) that eventually I would see some indication that it was while it was running. flickering of the monitor or something to indicate that the monitor or video card had a problem...but as long as I keep it running everything seems normal.

 

[PhilFrisbie]

No the monitor can just periodically fail to properly identify itself on boot. On the LCD monitor problem I mentioned, it worked fine except for the periodic boot problem.