scrambled screen

[steve-o]

My Wife's compaq presario 5280 comes up with an unreadable screen (different colored
squares blinking--unreadable) Sometimes if I reboot enough times it will boot correctly,
but then it will develop lines around the cursor arrow and in the screen. I believe the problem started when I downloaded "Felix the cat" screen inhabitant or possibly loading/ playing
JetfighterIII in DOS mode. She really loves this old machine (I had to upgrade to a Dell
w/ P-4 for myself) but I really would like to get it working for her. OS- win98 1st ed.
Thanx in advance to everybody.

[Pete]

I hesitated to answer, because all I have is some speculation. Since no one else answered, I'll give you my theory:

I've had this happen occasionally when running older computers at the highest screen resolution they were capable of. It only happened occasionally and seldom took more than one re-boot to fix, so I didn't try to do anything about it....

My opinion was that it happened because I was pushing the limits of what my video card and monitor were able to do, and sometimes something was less than perfect.

Experiment:
Right-click on the desktop and select "Properties".
Click on the "settings" tab:Try lowering the screen resolution (Screen Area) and see if that helps.

If not also try lowering the Colors setting (bits).Let us know if it works out. I'm curious.

[steve-o]

I reset at 16 color and 640X480. NG.
I'm looking for some sort of program that put a bug in the video.
I don't really know what I'm looking for that would screw it up.
I did get it to boot last night and tried a few things but no luck.
I have heard that the ATI Rage has problems with certain programs.
The problem is scrambled screen with unstable refresh rate and vertical lines in my screen when it does boot, with continual degredation in pic quality.
I did a full system restore which claims to reformat Cdrive but it just copied and reloaded the problem...Ohh well..

Thanks Again for the response.
S

[Pete]

Have you tried reducing (or changing) the "refresh rate"?

Right-click on the desktop and select "Properties".
Click on the "settings" tab
Click on "advanced"
Click on the "Adapter" tab
Try different settings from the drop-down list under "Refresh rate"

Program? Could be anything a lot newer than the computer, but I've heard that some high end games are likely to tax the capabilities of graphics cards, especially older cards.

[steve-o]

Yes, It said "windows was unable to change your refresh rate"