please help - computer emergency

[Kali]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=242x11224

[etherealtruth]

1. I am a computer imbecile ...

I am responding so that someone that is not may see this and respond

[flobee1]

2. I cant post in the groups section

If it looks like the display shrunk by several inches on the top and bottom and left nothing but black space, I'd say its your video card.
I've run into a lot of dell's that have this problem


I hope for your sake that you dont have on board video, otherwise you got serious issues

[Kali]

4. oh god what do you mean?

in this family whoever touched it las broke it and he thinks it is me!!!! I was the one screwing around with it - aaaaaaaaaa

[Kali]

5. reading your post more carefully

no it is full screen - everything works ok except it looks kind of like it was printed by a dirty printer - and the font, icons, menu boxes and such are compressed latteraly like they are squished side to side, for instance the start menu is all there but it is the full up and down lenght of the screen, but only a few inches wide, whereas it should be maybe 4 inches (guessing) it should be more square rather than such a long tall rectangle. Also there are light spots in the font, or even little blank parts in each letter

[Crandor]

7. can you take a screenshot? nt

[Sapphocrat]

3. System Restore. n/t

[IDemo]

6. If you haven't resolved this yet...

you may want to go to display / settings / advanced / troubleshoot, and turn down the 'hardware acceleration' slider a notch or two (assuming it's already set on "full").

[catmandu57]

8. Try this

Turn your monitor off then back on and see if it restores.

[teamster633]

9. Just a shot in the dark--

I've always run a CRT and you are running an LCD, but I've read that an LCD will only look good at its native resolution. Are you sure that when you reset the resolution you set it to this specific resolution?

[npincus]

10. did you re-boot?

[hamerfan]

11. I'm guessing it's fixed, but if not,

Go to START>SETTINGS>CONTROL PANEL>DISPLAY. Double click on DISPLAY, then click on the SETTINGS tab. In the Screen Area section (lower right) move the slider bar to make the setting 800x600. Then APPLY, then OKAY.
Of course, this will only work with Windows 98SE, which is what I'm running. Good luck and happy holidays,
dumpbush