Windows
98/Me/2000/XP video is configured from the Display Properties
Windows 98/Me does reasonably well at detecting common video adapters and installing the proper drivers for them. However, you may need to install a video driver manually in one of the following circumstances:
Windows 98/Me does not have a driver for your adapter. This situation is more common than you might expect. For example, Windows 98/Me does not provide a driver for the ubiquitous Intel i740 video adapter. This situation may also arise if you install a new video adapter in an existing Windows 98/Me system.
Windows 98/Me has a driver for your adapter and recognizes the hardware, but you have a more recent driver supplied by the adapter manufacturer. Manufacturers often provide enhanced drivers that are faster or support more features than the vanilla drivers included with Windows 98/Me.
Windows 98/Me has a driver for your adapter, but fails to autodetect the presence of the adapter, or autodetects the adapter as a different model than is actually present. This situation also arises more often than it should.
To install a new or updated video adapter, first visit the video adapter manufacturer's web site and download the latest Windows 98/Me drivers for your adapter. Get the most recent release version of the driver, avoiding beta or unsupported versions. To install the driver, display the Settings page, click Advanced, choose the Adapter tab, and click Change to start the Update Device Driver Wizard.
Also use this dialog to set refresh rate. Available options depend on the combination of monitor, adapter, and driver being used. When using a Plug-and-Play monitor, the usual choices are
Optimal which selects the highest refresh rate supported by both the monitor and adapter at the current resolutionand
Adapter default , which simply uses the (usually low) refresh rate that the adapter defaults to. Some configurations allow you to specify actual refresh ratese.g., 60, 70, 72, 75, and 85 Hz. Before you specify a refresh rate manually, make sure your monitor supports that refresh rate at the resolution and color depth you have selected. Some configurations do not allow changing refresh rate, in which case the refresh rate drop-down list does not appear.
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When you change resolution or refresh rate, some monitors automatically adjust to the new settings and display a properly centered image. Others require changing vertical and horizontal size and centering adjustments on the monitor to display the image properly. If you select a resolution and refresh rate that the monitor cannot display, the screen may be blank or filled with wavy lines. To correct this problem, restart the computer in Safe Mode by pressing F8 during boot and choosing Safe Mode. Choose the Standard VGA driver, restart the system normally, use Display Properties to select the proper driver and display settings that your monitor supports, and then restart the system normally.
The screen area setting determines how much information is displayed
on the screen by specifying the resolution of the image that the
video adapter delivers to the monitor. The default resolution
installed by Setup will be within the capabilities of your video
adapter and monitor, but may not be optimum. Use the Screen area
slider in Display Properties
Although Windows 98/Me itself supports changing resolution on the fly, doing so requires that the video adapter and driver support that feature. Changing resolution with some older video adapters and drivers requires shutting down and restarting Windows. If this is the case with your system, Windows notifies you that a shutdown is required to put the change into effect and allows you to shutdown immediately or defer doing so. If you choose the latter, configuration changes do not take effect until you later restart the system manually.
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If you frequently need to change resolution or color depths, the
preceding procedure gets old fast. Enabling the Windows 98/Me
QuickRes utility allows you to change resolution and color depth on
the fly. To enable QuickRes, choose Display Properties
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By default, Windows 98/Me configures the video driver it installs to
use all accelerator functions. Ordinarily, this setting works
properly and can be left as is. If you experience video problems,
including a mouse pointer that is jerky (check that your mouse is
clean first) or disappears entirely, odd video artifacts, or program
crashes, Windows 98/Me permits you to selectively disable some video
acceleration functions (Display Properties
Full
All accelerator functions enabled.
High
Most accelerator functions enabled. Use this setting if you experience minor video or mouse problems. Performance will be degraded somewhat but may be acceptable, particularly for simple 2D applications such as word processing.
Low
Most accelerator functions disabled. Use this setting if you experience severe video problems or have one or more programs that routinely hang. With this setting enabled, performance may be marginally acceptable for text applications, but little else. Make getting a better video card a high priority.
None
All accelerator functions disabled. Use this setting only if it is required to allow your system to run without crashing. When this setting is enabled, your video card is acting as a simple frame grabber, and its performance will almost certainly be unacceptable even for text applications. If you find this setting is required, replace your video card as soon as possible.
Windows 2000/XP uses a slider bar to offer similar performance
settings in the Display Properties
First position (None)
Disables all accelerations. Use this setting only if your computer frequently stops responding or has other severe problems.
Second position
Disables all but basic accelerations. Use this setting to connect more severe problems.
Third position
Disables all DirectDraw and Direct3D accelerations, and all cursor and advanced drawing accelerations. Use this setting to correct severe problems with DirectX-accelerated applications.
Fourth position
Disables all cursor and advanced drawing accelerations. Use this setting to correct drawing problems.
Fifth position
Disables cursor and bitmap accelerations. Use this setting if you experience mouse problems (jerky or disappearing pointer) or image corruption.
Sixth position (Full)
Enables all accelerations. This is the default setting for most recent Windows versions (Windows Server 2003 defaults to None) and the recommended setting unless you are experiencing video problems.
These descriptions of problems and recommended settings are based on Microsoft's advice. We recommend using settings other than Full only as temporary measures for troubleshooting. Your video adapter and driver should support Full acceleration. If they don't, something is wrong. Try updating the video driver to the latest stable version offered by the video adapter manufacturer. If that doesn't work, use a different video adapter.
Windows uses Small Fonts by default, but allows you to select
predefined Large Fonts, or to specify a custom font size by choosing
Other. The font size setting you select provides a
"baseline" value from which the
size of vector-based fonts used in applications is calculated.
Choosing one of the predefined settings also installs a set of raster
fonts that are used for such things as icon labels. A common reason
for using Large Fonts is when you run higher than standard
resolutione.g., 1024x768 on a 15-inch monitor, where using
Large Fonts or a custom font size allows you to make the text large
enough to be readable. Be cautious, however. Many applications do not
display properly using anything except Small Fonts. Note that instead
of changing font size directly (Display Properties
Getting consistent color across a wide range of peripherals, including monitors, scanners, and printers, is nontrivial, a task made more difficult by the diverse means used for producing color. Monitors produce color by illuminating phosphors. Printers may produce output that uses transmitted or reflected light to produce color by means of dyes or pigments. Scanners may capture either transmitted or reflected images. The color temperature of the lighting used to produce or view an image differs according to its source, and the gamma (in simple terms, contrast) varies with the device. With so many variables in play, the colors on your monitor are likely to be only an approximation of the original colors you scanned, and printed output is likely to differ substantially from both the original and the image on your monitor.
The different methods used to produce color mean that it is impossible to render color with complete consistency. A printed copy, for example, simply does not have the dynamic range that a transparency or monitor image has. But for those doing prepress work, some means of minimizing those differences is needed. To address this problem, Microsoft introduced
Image Color Management (
ICM ) with Windows 95. ICM organizes the characteristics of each device (e.g., for a scanner, the color temperature of the light source and the gamma of the image sensor; for a printer, the reflectivity characteristics of its various inks) and uses those stored characteristics to make color reproduction as consistent as possible across different devices.
Windows 98/Me includes the ICM V 2.0 API, which improves on the
limited capabilities of ICM V 1.0. Previously, you had to define
color characteristics for each combination of application and device.
Windows 98/Me allows you to define color management profiles which
take into account the specific imaging color characteristics of each
input and output device and allow all installed applications to use
that shared profile to maintain color consistency. ICM
characteristics for scanners and printers are set in the drivers for
those applications. Those for monitors are set in Display Properties
Color management is an extremely complex issue. For more information, search the Microsoft web site for "Integrated Color Management" or ICM.