How to fix your monitor’s colors after a reinstall

Question: After a Windows reinstall, my screen is stuck in 16-color mode at 640×480 pixels resolution, so it doesn’t look very good. All the graphics are jagged and hard to view. How do I fix this? –Danny

Answer: Sometimes when you reinstall Windows, the system may not be able to find the correct driver needed to run your video card properly, so it will default to a safe driver that will only display 16 or 256 colors, which makes everything on your desktop quite ugly.

A driver, by the way, is a piece of software that helps Windows “talk” to a piece of hardware, such as a video card in this case.

To fix this, you’ll need to locate the correct driver for your video card and reinstall it. Here’s a quick way to do that.

1. Click your Start button (bottom left of the Windows screen) and choose Settings > Control Panel. Then double-click on Display. Next click the Settings tab.
2. Under the Colors drop-down menu, there should be a list of color options including 16 colors, 256 colors, High Color, and True Color. On the right, there’s a slider under Screen area. As you move the slider from left to right, you’ll see options of 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768 and perhaps an even higher setting.
• On a 17-inch monitor, you’ll want a resolution setting for either 800×600 or 1024×768, so move the slider to the right until it’s set to either one of those.
• On a 15-inch monitor, 640×480 or 800×600 is best. You’ll notice that as the resolution goes up the items on the screen get smaller. If you have bad eyes you’ll want to stick to the lower resolutions.
3. As you move the slider to the right, fewer options are available in the “Colors” drop down on the left. Sometimes at high resolution, a driver will only support 256 colors or worse.

To give yourself more options, you need to install a better driver. To do this, click on the Advanced button and select Adapter (a video card is sometimes called a video adapter).

Next, click the Change button. A Windows wizard will open and you can opt to either search for a better driver or specify a location of a newer driver.
Select the auto-search option first and click Next. The computer will look for drivers on your system and either report that the best driver is already installed or present you with a couple of options.

Choose the best driver (you may have to experiment), and then let the system restart Windows. Once the driver is installed you can go back to the Settings tab in the Display applet in Control Panel, and play with the resolution and color settings.

If the auto-search doesn’t find a better driver, you’ll need to find a driver and tell the machine about it using the specify a driver option mentioned above.
Before you go any further, you’ll have to locate the correct driver. This is the hardest part in the process. If you have a name-brand computer, a CD probably came with the system will all the correct drivers necessary to run the computer. Put the CD in the CD drive and explore it, looking for a Drivers folder. You may have to dig a bit to find this folder. Driver files end in an .INF extension, so they may look something like i81xw9x.inf.

The latest video drivers can also be downloaded from the Internet from the computer maker’s website. For example, Compaq, IBM, and Dell all maintain comprehensive driver databases for the computers they sell in the support areas of their Web sites. All you need to know is the model number of your computer.

If you have a Hewlett Packard computer, don’t bother with the company’s website — the company has a poor track record of uploading appropriate drivers to the site. Look for the CD that came with your HP computer. You can also get a new driver from the video card maker.

You’ll need to know the name of your video card. That’s probably listed on the packing slip or outlined in your computer manual, if you still have either of those. If you have Norton Utilities 2001, there’s a system information tool that will tell you the brand and make of your video card under the program’s Display tab.

Once you have a copy of the driver, put it in a folder you can find on your computer. I usually store my drivers in a folder named Drivers on my Windows desktop, so that when I have to specify the driver location, it’s always c:windowsdesktopdrivers.

Once this is done, use the Specify a driver wizard to tell the system where the driver is. If it’s on a CD, specify that in the wizard and put the CD in your CD drive. If you have downloaded the driver to a folder on the computer, then specify the folder where it is located. The system should then load the driver from the folder you specified and, after a reboot, you should be back in business.