Please HELP!

I am no tech head so please bear with me. My sister turned on my comp today and noticed that there was no sound and that the display settings were set at 256 color and whatever the lowest resolution there is. I attempted to simply change the display settings, so I changed the resolution to 1028*768 (whatever the exact res # is) and the color depth to 32 bit, upon resetting the comp to see the changes it still displayed in 256 color and low res. I attempted again to correct the problem in the display settings but was halted when i clicked the settings tab; the screen went black and the computer aparently locked up!
There was nothing i could do except reset with ctrl+alt+delete. I repeated this useless process several times to no avail; the screen keeps blacking out when i press the settings tab! I am very desperate for a solution at the moment as i have several school related assignments that this malody could infringe upon. I have a feeling it is this crappy Windows Me os. I don't know what to do. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Edit: Ever since this problem started, every time my comp boots up an error message is diplayed:

"Rundll has caused an error in MMSYSTEM.DLL

Rundll will now close. If you continue to experience probs try restarting your comp"

Also, I tryed to play a QT video only to have the player say that my computer has NO SOUND HARDWARE! AAAAAAGGGGGGHH!
I hope this isn't serious business.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by FalklandKnight on 11/05/01 04:22 PM.</EM></FONT></P>