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A neighbour has an old machine running Windows 98 SE, intermittently
it changes the monitor resolution from 800x600 to 640x480 on booting
the machine.

He has upgraded the driver to the latest one on the SIS website but
the problem still happens.

The machine is an old home built unit that he was given some time ago
and has an SIS motherboard with onboard video.

Any suggestions, or pointers, that would help, would be most
appreciated.

Try a PCI or AGP(if a slot) card and disable the onboard stuff.
"John" <> wrote in message
news...
> A neighbour has an old machine running Windows 98 SE, intermittently
> it changes the monitor resolution from 800x600 to 640x480 on booting
> the machine.
>
> He has upgraded the driver to the latest one on the SIS website but
> the problem still happens.
>
> The machine is an old home built unit that he was given some time ago
> and has an SIS motherboard with onboard video.
>
> Any suggestions, or pointers, that would help, would be most
> appreciated.
>

John wrote:
>

Sometimes to get a driver working correctly you have to boot to safe
mode, delete ALL references to video card drivers in device manager,
reboot, then FORCE windows to install its generic driver, then install
the CORRECT driver according to the specific driver docs.

> A neighbour has an old machine running Windows 98 SE, intermittently
> it changes the monitor resolution from 800x600 to 640x480 on booting
> the machine.
>
> He has upgraded the driver to the latest one on the SIS website but
> the problem still happens.
>
> The machine is an old home built unit that he was given some time ago
> and has an SIS motherboard with onboard video.
>
> Any suggestions, or pointers, that would help, would be most
> appreciated.
>

--
http://www.bootdisk.com/

"Plato" <|@|.|> wrote in message
news:41ec8bc7$0$73537$...
> John wrote:
>>
>
> Sometimes to get a driver working correctly you have to boot to safe
> mode, delete ALL references to video card drivers in device manager,
> reboot, then FORCE windows to install its generic driver, then install
> the CORRECT driver according to the specific driver docs.

Amazing what you have to do to sometimes to coax windows into doing
something it steadfastly refuses to do, isn't it? Just today I had an HP
pavilion back in the shop (that I had just put a new WD harddrive into
before xmas) that the customer had evidently royally ****ed up the file
system trying to use Diskkeeper defragging software. Buggered up the files
really good. Config.sys was full of garbage characters and many files and
folders were missing, programs wouldn't run, (you get the picture).
basically a prime candidate for a factory recovery. So after the recovery,
I'm installing this update and that update, latest IE, antivirus, etc. Then
I go to shut down, and the thing (running Win98 gold) shuts down so fast,
you don't even see the "windows is shutting down" screen. Well, upon
starting back up, scandisk runs. EVERY time. And evidently because it is
shutting down too fast, and the harddrive cache isn't getting flushed,
leaving the volume "dirty" so scandisk wants to run at every boot as a
result. If you recall (dust off those old Win98 update memories) Win98SE and
WinME had this very problem and MS released a patch to deal with the issue
(which merely updated a system file and added a 2 second delay to the
shutdown sequence). Problem is, this system was running Win98 gold, and the
patch refused to install on it because it was written for Win98SE and WinME
only. So I used WinRAR to extract the contents from the MS patch file, and
inside there are a couple of .inf install files, new system file, and the
..reg files that enable the 2 second delay setting in the registry. Well, low
and behold, if you use the .inf file to install the patch
(right-click/install) it would install the update without the OS version
verification. Long story short, shutdown/scandisk problem is now SOLVED
because I forced the update to install on a version of Win98 it wasn't
released for. I know I could have just disabled scandisk from running at
startup by using the option in MS Config, but that would have also prevented
it from running in the event of a real problem, and I didn't want that
happening. So I decided to try this instead. Tomorrow will see some serious
stability testing to make sure this fix doesn't pose any other problems. But
so far it looks great.

hmmm, interesting

"Michael Hearne" <> wrote in message
news:LHEHd.1105$ nk.net...
> Plato wrote:
>
>> hmmm, interesting
>
> I had an old pcchips board with a socket 7 amd k6-2 and SiS6326 onboard
> video. I sold it, and got a call about once a week about the video mode
> changing to 640 x 480. I finally went over to this guys house, and when I
> asked him to reboot the machine, he pressed the power button. Twice.
>
> Well that's what it was, a shutdown problem, caused by operator error. But
> the machine didn't come back up in safe mode, it booted normally but
> without the video drivers loaded. I showed him how to use the mouse
> instead
> of the power button, and the problem dissapeared.
>
> As an aside, I no longer recommend pcchips mainboards because of their
> poor
> support - you can't get drivers for anything over a year old from them.
>
> Michael
>

PCChips board have always sucked IMHO. They have been the packard Bell of
motherbaord manufacturers as long as I can remember.

"Michael Hearne" <> wrote in message
news:2MGHd.1371$ nk.net...
> Thor wrote:
>
>>
>> "Michael Hearne" <> wrote in message
>> news:LHEHd.1105$ nk.net...
>>> Plato wrote:
>>>
>>>> hmmm, interesting
>>>
>>> I had an old pcchips board with a socket 7 amd k6-2 and SiS6326 onboard
>>> video. I sold it, and got a call about once a week about the video mode
>>> changing to 640 x 480. I finally went over to this guys house, and when
>>> I
>>> asked him to reboot the machine, he pressed the power button. Twice.
>>>
>>> Well that's what it was, a shutdown problem, caused by operator error.
>>> But the machine didn't come back up in safe mode, it booted normally but
>>> without the video drivers loaded. I showed him how to use the mouse
>>> instead of the power button, and the problem dissapeared.
>>>
>>> As an aside, I no longer recommend pcchips mainboards because of their
>>> poor support - you can't get drivers for anything over a year old from
>>> them.
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>
>>
>> PCChips board have always sucked IMHO. They have been the packard Bell of
>> motherbaord manufacturers as long as I can remember.
>
> Well, I was poor at the time, and had to take what I could get. After the
> Internet bust of 2000, I was getting 256 MB sdram for about $11.00 a
> stick,
> and I bought a lot of it! Then they invented DDR! Of course, I was still
> able to use the sdram, but I took a look last week and it was back up to
> $49.00 for the exact same product.
>
> Back when cutting edge was an 8088 and 16 MB of memory, the stupid
> machines
> cost about $3,000 apiece, and now they're boat anchors. I always wait till
> the movie gets to television before I watch it. Out of ten of the latest
> gizmos, only four will survive. Packard Bell was a prime example.
>
> I can't count the bloody knuckles I've suffered from working on those
> things. Proprietary everything except the screws. Now, IBM had proprietary
> screws. You had to have a special hollow-point star driver to work on one
> of those monsters.

yep. Seen those. Compaq had their funky little slot/torx hybrid screws, but
at least you could use a small flat-blade screwdriver in them.

Michael Hearne wrote:
>
> I can't count the bloody knuckles I've suffered from working on those
> things. Proprietary everything except the screws. Now, IBM had proprietary
> screws. You had to have a special hollow-point star driver to work on one
> of those monsters.

They are called torx and I always have two sizes with me. They also work
on many car lenses when you have to remove the lens to replace the bulb.

"Plato" <|@|.|> wrote in message
news:41f330d2$0$12334$...
> Michael Hearne wrote:
>>
>> I can't count the bloody knuckles I've suffered from working on those
>> things. Proprietary everything except the screws. Now, IBM had
>> proprietary
>> screws. You had to have a special hollow-point star driver to work on one
>> of those monsters.
>
> They are called torx and I always have two sizes with me. They also work
> on many car lenses when you have to remove the lens to replace the bulb.

well, they weren't standard TORX head screws though. They had little posts
in the middle of the star-shaped hole, which prevented you from using
standard TORX screwdrivers or wrenches on them. You had to have special bits
with a hollow center to accomodate the post. I have a security bit set for
this purpose, and also a standard TORX set for things cars, etc. Jeep
Wranglers used to use TORX-head bolts in many places.

Thor wrote:
>

OK I see I missed the hollow thing. Never did see one of those.

> >> screws. You had to have a special hollow-point star driver to work on one
> >> of those monsters.
> >
> > They are called torx and I always have two sizes with me. They also work
> > on many car lenses when you have to remove the lens to replace the bulb.
>
> well, they weren't standard TORX head screws though. They had little posts
> in the middle of the star-shaped hole, which prevented you from using
> standard TORX screwdrivers or wrenches on them. You had to have special bits
> with a hollow center to accomodate the post. I have a security bit set for
> this purpose, and also a standard TORX set for things cars, etc. Jeep
> Wranglers used to use TORX-head bolts in many places.