Screen Resolution Help

[renthor]

Ok, something's gone wrong with my Windows 7. I was playing a game in window mode, told it to go full screen. The game worked, played it for a little bit, then I quit. Now my screen will not go back to the windows desktop, it just stays black.

I tried safe mode and system restore and cannot get it to work. I know windows is still working because I can hear the logon sound when it starts up, just a black screen. The monitor never shuts off or goes into standby mode, it just stays black - no cursor even, so I don't think its activation related.

Can someone please do me a huge favor and figure out what the key strokes are to change the screen resolution? My plan is to right-click and then go from there with the keyboard. Maybe changing the resolution to anything else will force it out of whatever mode it is currently stuck in.

Thanks in advance.

 

[johngalt]

Right click on Desktop, press letter C, then hold ALT key and press letter R, then up and down arrows move the resolution up and down - I assume you want to take it to the top resolution allowed, especially if you are using LCDs, because Windows has a good habit of *usually* limiting resolutions to what your monitor can handle....

Any other things you need?

Also, have you tried a different monitor? Perhaps the game that you played stressed the monitor out and eventually broke it when you quit....

An alternate video card would be handy to test as well...

Finally, the default checking all connections and making sure the card is seated properly (make sure to do this when the computer is off) is a requisite for troubleshooting this issue as well...

 

[renthor]

Hm, thanks for the instructions, but they don't appear to do anything for me. The screen doesn't flicker or even so much as register that I've made a resolution change. Usually when I do something like that my screen will go into "auto-config" mode and adjust itself.

Acer AL2016W if that helps.

And I know it is not the screen or graphics card because I dual-boot with Vista, and I am currently using that right now to post this.

Is there anything I can try in safe mode? I tried changing the resolution from there, but that only effects the current session's resolution, not your normal resolution.. hmmm

 

[johngalt]

You *could* try driver sweeper in Safe Mode and ...

feh - you have to install it first and then load it ins safe mode....

I haven't installed it yet here, though, and since the box seems to be working, I suspect it may not be a "resolution" issue so much as a refresh rate issue. If that is the case, we have two options - I can try to guide you through setting the refresh rate back to 59/60 or I can try to walk you through installing Driver Sweeper so that once it is installed, you can go into safe mode and wipe your video card drivers out....

I suggest we try refresh rate first.

 

[renthor]

Ok, yeah refresh rate sounds the easiest, hopefully. Installing programs on a blank screen just does not sound fun at all. 60 will probably be the best bet, I've tried 59 other times and I get hit or miss results with that.

If this doesn't work, do you think just uninstalling or rolling back the driver in safe mode would work? Might not be as clean as driver sweeper, but I could always install and run that if it got my screen to come back up.

 

[johngalt]

Unfortunately, I am having to find an alternate method as the Advanced properties is only opening via a link at this moment....

I may have found *how* to get to it, but there is a larger problem - the box will have numerous listings and may still cause you problems.

Let's try it though - I suspect I can get ti working in a couple of steps:

1. Right click
2. press C
3. press the Tab key *6* times
4. hit the Space Bar
5. hold ALT and press L
6. use the up arrow *twice* - hopefully that should get to a resolution that will be usable
7. press ENTER
8. press Alt A - if the screen flickers, press the left arrow then press Space bar

if the screen is viewable, you can exit out - if not, repeat starting with Step 5.

If you do the up arrow only once, then it may not catch it, as I suspect the system is still looking for another ALT key combination....and if you use the *down* arrow, then it will take 3 to four presses to actually move the selection box - hence the up arrow is the best way to go

 

[renthor]

I'm wondering if there isn't something else going on, because nothing I seem to try is working. The monitor still isn't even registering that I'm trying to change any settings.

Unfortunately at this point I think I'll have to reinstall Windows. Unless you or anyone else can think of something else to try.

Thank you though for all of your help.

 

[johngalt]

To me it sounds like the game has hijacked your display settings and is now not allowing you to fix it. Let me try to install Driver Sweeper and see if it is relatively easy to install - because Driver Sweeper works in Safe Mode, at the very least you'll be able to get rid of your graphics accelerator's driver and that will force W7 to load a default (and ugly looking) VGA driver and from there you should be able to reinstall your driver.

BTW - what game?

 

[johngalt]

UPDATE - I had forgotten about this - they have the pure binaries available so you don't have to install it - is you run Safe mode with Networking support, then you should be able to download and extract and run DS from directly within Safe Mode....
Guru3D - Driver Sweeper (no installer) download from Guru3D.com

 

[renthor]

UPDATE - I had forgotten about this - they have the pure binaries available so you don't have to install it - is you run Safe mode with Networking support, then you should be able to download and extract and run DS from directly within Safe Mode....
Guru3D - Driver Sweeper (no installer) download from Guru3D.com

THANK YOU! This did the trick. Running Win7 right now. Now just to reinstall the drivers.

Again, thanks. Saved me from a new install..Oh, and the game was Doom.

 

[johngalt]

The original DOOM? lol - well, then, there is obviously an incompatibility....

Glad it worked for ya m8.

 

[davehc]

Ok, yeah refresh rate sounds the easiest, hopefully. Installing programs on a blank screen just does not sound fun at all. 60 will probably be the best bet, I've tried 59 other times and I get hit or miss results with that.
.

Sorry to but in. Isn't that an LCD? If so, they do not use refresh rates.

 

[johngalt]

No, but your video card can still set a refresh rate that the LCD cannot handle - try it - force your video card to use 75 or even 85 on and LCD - and watch yer screen disappear and your monitor complain.

 

[davehc]

Yes John. Been there (nearly) done that. I think, though, you have to be using one of the third party graphics drivers or overclocking to be offered anything other than 60??

 

[renthor]

You can trigger other refresh rates in the advanced settings, using the List All Modes button, I believe regardless of what driver you're using. Though a 3rd party driver will probably get you a whole lot more modes to choose from.

And yes, the original Doom, played using ZDoom, and it works surprisingly well. Just no full screen anymore hah. Thanks again.

 

[davehc]

I do not have the technical backgrounf so you would have to browse but. LCD's DO NOT have a refresh rate. If you change (when it is shown) a refresh rate on an LCD, it makes the trigger move faser, but will do nothing for the flicker (that's what it's all about) on the screen and will make the monitor work unecessarily harder.

 

[renthor]

From Wikipedia:

Much of the discussion of refresh rate does not apply to the liquid crystal portion of an LCD monitor. This is because while a CRT monitor uses the same mechanism for both illumination and imaging, LCDs employ a separate backlight to illuminate the image being portrayed by the LCD's liquid crystal shutters. The shutters themselves do not have a "refresh rate" as such due to the fact that they always stay at whatever opacity they were last instructed to continuously, and do not become more or less transparent until instructed to produce a different opacity.
The closest thing liquid crystal shutters have to a refresh rate is their response time, while nearly all LCD backlights (most notably fluorescent cathodes, which commonly operate at (~200Hz) have a separate figure known as flicker, which describes how many times a second the backlight pulses on and off.

I'm not disputing that LCDs do or do not have a "refresh rate" as they do not. However, you can still force your graphics card to set a different rate and this will mess with your screen. If you do not believe me, try it yourself. I don't know if changing the refresh rate changes the response time, or what it does, but you can either get a black screen, or the current image will become distorted and very fuzzy.

I don't believe its about making the monitor work harder or not, I am reasonably sure the graphics card is just outputting in a mode that the monitor can't handle, as it's designed for CRTs.

 

[racecarboobtat]

I'm having the same problem with Windows Media Center. If I maximize it, the screen goes black. When I reboot Windows, I get to the login, then it just goes black.

I can restart in safe mode and uninstall the driver for my Nvidia 8800GT then restart succesfully albeit with 800x600 resolution. Then windows automatically downloads and reinstalls the Nvidia driver.

The first time I did this, I was able to restart normally with 1360x768 resolution. However, I've never had another succesful restart.

Am I just stuck waiting for a new Nvidia graphics driver or is there something more I can do to stop the black screen from happening?

 

[racecarboobtat]

Update. Installing the newest NVidia Vista32 driver for my 8800GT while in safe mode fixed my black screen problem completely.

It's much more stable than the one Microsoft automatically installs.

 

[Robber79]

I can't make the setting of the refresh rate to be 60Hz, it is stuck on 59Hz whenever i try to change, it won't. My screen res. is 1680x1050.