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When booting up in normal mode, my PC has just started to use the 'safe mode' graphics instead of the normal high resolution. Anyone know why this is and how can I can get them back ?
Thanks
This usually means that your graphics card driver has been damaged and needs to be reinstalled, presuming that you have already tried the normal way to adjust the settings (right click on the desktop, properties, settings, usually choose Hi-Color and 600x800 for a 17" monitor).
To reinstall the drivers, first find them on CD or download the up to date version for your video card from its manufacturer, then right click on My Computer, go to properties, device manager, expand the + beside display adapters (which means graphics cards), click on the driver listed, go to properties (bottom left), find the driver tab, click update driver, select specify the location of the driver, click on display a list of drivers in a specific location, click next, click have disk, and point Windows to the new drivers for your card and let it update. Reboot and see how it is.
If you don't know what video card you have identify your video card as follows:
Either go to www.belarc.com and download the belarc advisor and when you run it it will tell you what all of your hardware is, or
hwinfo /ui which is built into Windows does a similar job and is accessed by going to start, run, type hwinfo /ui and press enter (note the space after hwinfo).
When you have identified your video card, you can go to the manufacturer's website and download the latest driver for it. Make sure it is the appropriate driver for Windows ME. To find the manufacturer just use www.google.com to search for the name and model of the card.
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Thanks Trev. I should have made it clear that it is not actually in 'safe' mode but just appears to be in safe mode, i.e. 16 colour etc. Knowing this ,does your response still hold good ?
Someone else mentioned that I might have 'selective start up' set. I'll also check that tonight when I get home.
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Well I checked the display settings last night and the most it'll give me is 256 colours. Does this indicate to you that the driver (NFK 9905 on NVIDIA GeForce2MX/MX400) is missing ? If so, how can this situation occurr ?
Thanks
Martin
P.S. I also checked msconfig and it was set to 'selective' start up but even when I changed to normal, it made no difference but you probably knew that anyway :¬)
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I've tracked down the driver from the Nvidia site ( 40.72_Win9x_WHQL.exe). Does this sound right ? I didn't realise it would be such a large file (12mb) or that it would be an 'exe'. Just checking....
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The state of your graphics has nothing to do with safe mode. It just appears that way. The PC is using the basic standards VGA graphics driver for some reason, so proceed as indicated in my first response.
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Trev,
I decided to reinstall the driver that came on the original CD. The update worked fine although I did receive messages saying something like 'your current driver is working properly' but I continued anyway. It works now and many thanks for you advice (perfectly clear). I'm still not sure whether it actually did the update from the CD or just detected its existence on my C: sometime during the driver update process.
Is it normal to 'lose sight' of drivers like this ?
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Yes, it happens occasionally, but usually because you were doing something which caused the problem. What led up to it or did it just come as a complete surprise?
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complete shock although I have to admit my kids use the same PC and, as they tend to be more 'adventurous' than adults, it was probably them entering into unchartered territory - thanks
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