Well I was presented with a problem that a friend is having on a win98(first edition). It seems that her screen was ok one day, but later that afternoon she noticed that "things have gone black", such as Windows Washer program. I tried this out yesterday and the outline of the Windows Washer program comes up and I see the check marks checking off items, but I can not see the items it is checking, as well as the background of the program. Explorer works fine but at times the background is black, I tried display adapter settings, but no luck. One thing that I did notice that may help, is that when windows starts up, it has that blue sky/white clouds background,..well she likes that one and uses that as her background, but I noticed that looking at the clouds they seem pixelly, not smooth and blended,it was very striking to me that I could see the countours and layers making up the sky and clouds with a hint of black in the background. I hope you can understand this, as I did not till I say it yesterday. I think that she should reinstall her video card and update the drivers, but this thing happened last friday within only an hour of none use, and when she went to use it the black background was there,making things hard to use. Any suggestions would help(Iinstalled norton utilities 2001 and that did not work on that problem). Erin

Reboot in safe mode(press f8 after bios boots but before windows starts loading), update video card drivers and reboot. If this does not do the trick, please test another video card, if you got one handy. Good luck.

Thanks for the advice, I will pass along to my friend(I'm out of town today). Thanks again