Troubleshooters.Com Presents

Beating the Video Mode Catch 22

Copyright (C) 1997 By Steve Litt: Steve Litt's email address

LEGAL NOTE: I have done my best to make this document complete and accurate. However, any hardware or software installation carries the possibility of problems, including possible data loss and possible irreparable hardware damage. I take no responsibility for any problems you might encounter as a result of your use of this document, including errors and omissions in this document. If you cannot accept this, do not use this document.
This document is copyrighted, but I hereby give you permission to print a paper copy for yourself, to refer to while your computer is taken apart. I have made this document one long page rather than a link hierarchy so you can print and use it without a computer.

You could fix your video mode if only you could read the screen, and you could read the screen if only you could fix the video mode. Here's what you do.

  1. Be aware that you will be booting to safe mode, so be ready to press the F5 button on the next step.
  2. Boot to safe mode. Try to do it with a series of Alt-F4's, or if not that Ctrl-Alt-Deletes, but failing that you may need to hit the reset button.
  3. When you see "starting Windows", press the F5 button. This will get you into safe mode. Since safe mode loads no drivers, including video drivers, you'll be placed in 640x480x16, which presumably your monitor can handle.
  4. Start/settings/control-panel, then double-click Display, then the Settings tab. Configure the adapter, monitor, screen resolution and color depth to values that have worked in the past.
  5. Click Apply, then shut down the computer. When you reboot, the problem should be gone. UNLESS:

Unless

Things get real tricky when you use a specialized program that comes with the video card. I'll use Diamond's InControl Desktop Manager as an example. Diamond's InControl Desktop Manager is like a feature rich version of Win95's display setup. For instance, newer versions of InControl Desktop Manager allows you to change the refresh rate, which can cure your flicker, or can make your screen unreadable if you use the wrong one. The program has safeguards to guide you away from making such a wrong refresh rate choice, but believe me, it's still not a hard mistake to make.

Imagine you've just set your refresh rate for something which makes your screen unreadable. You can't change it back, because you can't see the screen. If you boot to safe mode, Diamond's drivers won't load so neither will InControl Desktop Manager. And if you have original Win95, InControl Desktop Manager may be the only way you have of changing the refresh rate. So if only you could get things running in non-safe mode, you could change the refresh rate, and if only you could change the refresh rate, you could get thing running in non-safe mode. And then you could see the screen to change the refresh rate to get out of safe mode... I'm going to call this a catch 33 :-)

Here's what you do:

  1. Be aware that you will be booting to safe mode, so be ready to press the F5 button on the next step.
  2. Boot to safe mode. Try to do it with a series of Alt-F4's, or if not that Ctrl-Alt-Deletes, but failing that you may need to hit the reset button.
  3. When you see "starting Windows", press the F5 button. This will get you into safe mode. Since safe mode loads no drivers, including video drivers, you'll be placed in 640x480x16, which presumably your monitor can handle.
  4. Start/settings/control-panel, then double-click Display, then the Settings tab, then click the "Change Display Type" button. Leave the display adapter where it is, but change the monitor type to Standard VGA 640x480. Click here for detailed instructions on this step.
  5. Shutdown, and allow a normal (non-safe mode) reboot. Your video will be clean because your Diamond drivers "knew" that a Standard VGA 640x480 monitor type can take only a lowest-common-denominator refresh rate. But the fact that you rebooted with the Diamond driver means the InControl Desktop Manager will run.
  6. Run the InControl Desktop Manager, and change the resolution, colors, and refresh rate to values producing clean video. You're done.


Changing the Monitor to Standard VGA 640x480

These are details to the set of instructions above. If you've completed the instructions above, ignore these instructions. These are the detailed instructions for changing the monitor to standard VGA 640x480. They assume you've already come to the "Change Display Type" screen via Start/settings/control-panel, then double-click Display, then the Settings tab, then click the "Change Display Type" button:

  1. On the "Change Display Type" screen, click the lower Change button to change the monitor type (not the adapter type). You'll be brought to the "Select Device" screen.
  2. Click the "Show All Devices" radio button. You'll be brought to a 2 paned screen has a pane called "Manufacturers" on the left, and a pane called "Models" on the right.
  3. In the "Manufacturers" pane, choose "(Standard monitor types)". The contents of the "Models" pane will change accordingly.
  4. In the "Models" pane, choose Standard VGA 640x480.
  5. Click the OK button.
  6. Keep clicking OK and Close buttons until you're out of the display setup.


Spider Food

Since many Troubleshooters.Com visitors arrive via search engines, and since many with this problem don't think of this problem as "catch 22", here are some other phrases to alert searchers:

 [ Back to Microcomputer Troubleshooting | Home page | About Steve Litt | Email Steve Litt | Training ]

Copyright (C)1997 by Steve Litt. -- Legal