computer help?

[YABYUM]

after our laptop fried we recieved a free pc from my in laws. it is an old Gateway. i bought and installed a new hard drive. yeah...all by myself. we are now back online, however it is such a miserable experience because our display is enormous. i mean that the windows that show the websites are huge. words are huge. most words we cannot read. colors are distorded. most pictures look like negatives of themselves. i cant even watch you tube. what the hell is wrong? just an old computer unable to get it up? i have heard the suggestion of a "video card"? dont know what that is. i have tried fuckin around with all the options and tools but no dice. can you help? i miss the internet.

[bennie2]

ronnie,

it may be an old shitty graphics card. Gateway were old made to order machines (I think) so it's most likely onboard graphics (your monitor plugs directly into the motherboard rather than it's own little fancy graphics card.

right click on your "my computer" icon

click the "hardware" tab

click "device manager" button

find "display adapters" and click to expand the list.

this will tell you what graphics you have. if there is a little question mark on the icon there... that means windows can't recognise it.

right click on the thing listed there and select "update driver". hopefully windows will sort that out for you.

if not, once you find out what the card is, you can google it and try to download the driver. install it and hopefully get it sorted out.

that is the limit of my knowledge, guy. good luck with it.

[bennie2]

PS

sorry if any of that was patronising. I spend all week at work talking to morons and sometimes it sticks when I try to explain things.

have you checked your display settings? it may be as simple as adjusting those by right clicking on your desktop, selecting properties and then settings.

[Doreen Peri]

It also sounds like it might be your monitor/display settings (resolution, colors, etc)

Not sure where the monitor/display settings are located on a pc as i'm a mac user.

maybe someone else can direct you. If the colors are off and the words are too big, changing the settings for your monitor should fix that.

[YABYUM]

thanks to all, i tried all your options and still nothing. the computer tells me that i have the best version for my graphics card. everything on display seems normal and i am just ready to break shit. i can barely read things on this site. maybe its time to call dell and see about financing a new laptop. anyone else ever do that? is it affordavle? i would hate to use a credit card. in fact, i wont. this sucks.

[stilltrucking]

Right click on your desk top any where but on an icon. In the drop down box select properties It will bring this window



Click on settings and it will give you this window



Hopefully you will be able to change the settings if not check out the adapter in the window below

Click on adavanced and it will give you this



Click on adapter
and get this

[Doreen Peri]

Are you sure it's not in your display settings? That's what it sounds like to me. What's your resolution set at? The lower the resolution (smaller numbers), the larger the windows and the type is huge. The better resolution... larger numbers... means the windows will be smaller and the type smaller. In your display settings you can also correct the color problems your having.

Here are some articles about display/monitor settings for PC Windows.

http://www.helium.com/knowledge/130280- ... windows-xp

.........

Ahhhh/.... Trucking was posting same time as me.... Great post, Jack!

Yes, look at 'trucking's post .... that should help.

[stilltrucking]

I hope that helps
I think Doreen is right, it sounds like your settings are too low, probably only 16 color and
your screen resolution is 480 by 360, you need to set it to 800 x 600 at least. And your colors should be set to 16 bit 256 colors at least.
Congradulations on the hard drive. If you can do that an adapter card is a piece of cake to put in.

It is also possible that windows is not recognizing your adapter card and so is setting it to some generic minimum. I hope not. Check out the adapter tab it will tell you what kind of card you have. You may have to search for a driver. Sometimes you have to take the card out of the computer and read the numbers on it to find the card model. Sometimes you can go to the computer makers website and check the model number there.

Best wishies
keep us posted

What happened to your notebook, how do you know it is fried?

[mrs. yabyum]

thanks everyone for your suggestions! unfortunately, we are unable to change ANYTHING including resolution and screen size and color and drivers. we have tried everything. EVERYTHING. except new adapter card. that may be the solution; we'll probably look into it. WHEN I'M NOT FURIOUSLY SCRATCHING/REMINDING MYSELF TO NOT SCRATCH MY ITCHY STRETCHING BELLY.

as for laptop, every time we turn it on, it tells us there was a "disk read error" and prompts us to ctrl+alt+del. we do that. and it tells us there was a disk read error. ctrl+alt+del. disk read error. we've gone through that cycle up to half an hour AND pressed the reset button on the bottom of the machine hundreds of times AND gone into setup mode and tried everything we could there. i know poor lappy is 5 years old and SO behind the times, but it was functioning really well and considering our current situation i think it's worth it to pay the geek squad to do their magic. because along with the giant technological leap backwards we've taken, the most comfortable (really, all-around-able) position for me to use prehistoricomp is sitting on the floor. well, okay, sitting on the hard floor for half an hour earlier this evening helped with a pregnancy-related uncomfortable situation which was appreciated but other than that, I MISS CUDDLING LAPTOP ON COUCH.

i'm also worrying in a big way about how we're going to upload new baby photos and videos onto our blogs if we don't get this computer thing figured out. hopefully baby will keep cooking until we get it sorted.

really, thanks everyone for your consideration and suggestions. we truly do appreciate everyone's input and commiseration.

[stilltrucking]

If you click on the tab that says adapter
what does it say?
you can't change the settings unless windows recognizes the adapter. If windows does not recognize the adapter you need to update the driver.
Did you try going into the control panel and click on find new hardware and see if windows can find the video adapter? If not the computer manufacture will have the drivers on their website.

If Ronnie can put a hard drive in a desk top and install windows, putting a hard disk in a laptop is a snap. Sounds like the hard drive crashed.
I don't know what to say about the itching except to wish you much happiness and hope all goes well. It is all so wonderful I can't even imagine what you are going through.

take care.

[Doreen Peri]

Did you all ever get this problem resolved?

[YABYUM]

no. i really hate it. i will update ronnie gets it anyway.