Cannot see icons after changing screen resolution in windows xp

[sircdu]

Hello,
I installed a new monitor and driver. I chose too high of a resolution and now monitor is black and says to lower resolution. I can't see anything to do that! Even safe mode screen is black with only safe mode in corners and top middle. I cannot see any icons or start button no matter what mode I login to. How can I fix this?

 

[ksiemb]

Hello,
I installed a new monitor and driver. I chose too high of a resolution and now monitor is black and says to lower resolution. I can't see anything to do that! Even safe mode screen is black with only safe mode in corners and top middle. I cannot see any icons or start button no matter what mode I login to. How can I fix this?

Any Manual controls contrast on monitor, under neath front panel ?

 

[sircdu]

No - no monitor settings are resolving the issue. I'm told I have to probably change settings at boot up menu. But, I don't know what setting to change. I unplugged my graphics card and plugged monitor into onboard graphic adapter to motherboard, but that still did not resolve problem. I can see windows xp boot screen, login screen with user and password, but once I type in my password, the screen goes all blue in XP normal mode or all black in XP safe mode. I'm told the icons are there, I just cannot see them. I cannot change any settings without seeing something!

 

[ksiemb]

No - no monitor settings are resolving the issue. I'm told I have to probably change settings at boot up menu. But, I don't know what setting to change. I unplugged my graphics card and plugged monitor into onboard graphic adapter to motherboard, but that still did not resolve problem. I can see windows xp boot screen, login screen with user and password, but once I type in my password, the screen goes all blue in XP normal mode or all black in XP safe mode. I'm told the icons are there, I just cannot see them. I cannot change any settings without seeing something!

I would remove CMOS battery & let it reconfigure at boot.

 

[tigsounds]

Hello,
<snip>
Even safe mode screen is black with only safe mode in corners and top middle.
<snip>
How can I fix this?

If you can see the "safe mode" in the corners, or can figure out where an area within the 4 corners is at, right-click and select properties, Settings tab, and lower res down to something low like 640x480. Accept changes and restart machine. The monitor driver should have allowed only valid resolutions settings to show, so be careful when changing next time.

If this is not posssible...
Pull the hard drive from the machine.
Add it to another computer as a data drive.
Right-click on boot.ini (in the root directory of the drive) and un-check hidden, system, and read-only attributes.
Open boot.ini in notepad and add /basevideo to the end of the default operating system line and the line showing the drive specifics... here is an example:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS /basevideo
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=alwaysoff /fastdetect /basevideo

Save and now re-install in your computer.

Now with your machine showing everything, huge, make the res changes you want, like set to the native resolution of the monitor, including the refresh rate. If it messes up after clicking "apply" sit there, it will revert in 15 seconds, try something else. If it won't revert, re-start the computer and try again.

You'll need to go back and edit the boot.ini file to remove the /basevideo entry later as your machine will always start up at 640x480 until you edit the change out.



When you get it all back, pay close attention to the refresh rate as this can make the physical size of the screen image be too big or too small to fit the monitor, despite the resolution. (Strange, but true).

 

[sircdu]

OK. I'll try the second option as even a right click shows nothing. I'll let you know. Thanks.