Windows 7: Resolution stuck at 640x480

I am honestly completely confused as to why this is happening. This morning I boot up my computer and it was stuck at 640x480, for no apparent reason. Now, this isn't the first time this has happened. It happened once before (I was trying to over clock the computer with ATI Overdrive, I'm not actually sure if its related anymore) and I tried uninstalling the video driver and then reinstalling it, but when I uninstalled it the monitor was completely dead, including showing the BIOS boot up screen. After replacing the video card, motherboard, and even the ram, I ended up just replacing the DVI-D cable and it finally worked. Now almost a month later its happened again. I tried replacing the cable again, but this time it did nothing. Any advice would be appreciated, because I feel totally fubared right now. My system information should be on my profile (I'm a newcomer to the site, by the way).

Welcome.

I'm going to assume you have the ATI drivers installed for your card. Are you able to change the resolution manually by going into Windows control panel\Display settings, or the Catalyst control panel?

If you aren't able to change the resolution using the OS or driver controls, it might be a hardware issue, or it could be the drivers. 640 x 480 is like the default resolution. All monitors support it, and it's usually what the BIOS screen comes up as. It's a failsafe, to give you a raster (picture) if something goes wrong with your drivers, or with a Windows install, when drivers haven't been loaded yet.

If you have access to another computer, try plugging the monitor into it, and see if it displays at the proper resolution. If it works, that rules out a monitor issue. By the sound of it, though, it looks like the monitor may be the problem, since it's happening with another card.

I see that your cooling is listed as none. I don't know if you're overclocking the video card, but if you are, without half decent case cooling it may be stressing the card too much if the extra heat can't be exhausted from the case. With electronics, heat is the enemy.

If the monitor works right on another PC, post back with some details of what happened, and we'll see if we can be of more help.

Try updating the drive for the video card.

I connected it to my laptop and it worked fine. I also tried updating the driver and what happened was I eventually got a never ending black screen during the update. After about 15 minutes I rebooted and nothing changed. When I try to change the resolution with anything, the res is grayed out and stuck on 640x480. And its also not currently over clocked at all.

K, at this point if someone told me I could just get a new graphics card and my computer would work fine I would do it. I've been considering buying a nvidia gtx 460 for a while anyway, and if i could just do that and solve my problems, then let me know.

EDIT: eff me, I start it up to get a certain file I need for some work done and then it randomly starts working fine like nothing happened. I would still like some help on figuring out why this happens. If I never figure it out I'm considering getting a new video card...

Sounds like either the monitor or the card is flaky.

I agree, sounds like a bad card or you pushed it too far overclocking.

Very well might be time to consider that new one more seriously.

~Lordbob

Agreed, thanks guys. I'm probably gonna set some cash aside for a new card in the close future.

I'd the same problem a while ago two months or so. I was stuck just like you did with 640x480 resolution. It happened to me again yesterday Lucky for me and probably you, I figured out the cause

Click"Start">Type "Config" and then press enter>Choose "Boot" tap> Under Boot options, uncheck "Base video" option

Base video could've been configured manually or through any software -driver included- you may have installed

Let me know if it did work