How to List All Available Video Card Modes

Quickly list all display modes, including resolution, color depth, and refresh rate, supported by your video card.


If you are troubleshoot Windows XP display issue, you may want to quickly display which display modes (screen resolution, color depth, and refresh rate) are supported by your video card. With this list you can determine if expected modes are not supported by Windows, possibly resulting in searching for an updated driver.

Follow the steps
1. Right-click an empty area of your Desktop and choose "Properties".

2. When the "Display Properties" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, click the "Settings" tab.

3. Click the "Advanced" button.

4. When the video card dialog box appears, click the "Adapter" tab.

5. Click the "List All Modes" button. A "List All Modes" dialog box will appear.

How to Adjust Display Settings

This post provide computer help if you are unable to change your display settings, the display adapter may be corrupted.Try the following steps to resolve this issue:

1. Open System Properties in Control Panel and click the Hardware Profiles tab. Highlight the hardware profile that is marked (current), click Copy, then enter a name for the new profile such as "Test."
2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode. To do this, click Start, click Shutdown, click Restart, press F8 when you receive the "Starting Windows" prompt, and then click to choose Safe Mode from the Startup menu.
3. When you receive a prompt to choose a hardware profile to boot into, click the Test profile and allow the computer to boot into Windows.

NOTE: This hardware profile will allow you to make changes to Device Manager without damaging the original hardware configuration.
4. Open System Properties again and click the Device Manager tab.
5. Click the plus sign ("+") next to Display Adapters to view the list of device drivers.
6. Click the display adapter that is listed and click Remove. Click OK when you receive the "Warning: You are about to remove this device from your system" prompt.
7. If there are multiple display drivers listed, do the same steps for each device.
8. Close System Properties, then click Start, click Shutdown and then click Restart to restart the computer.
9. When you receive the Hardware Profile prompt again, click Test. Windows should detect a display adapter during startup and you will receive either a prompt to restart the computer to complete the device installation, or a prompt to provide a manufacturer disk to install the drivers.
10. When you restart again, click the Test profile again and try adjusting the display settings from the Settings tab of Display Properties in Control Panel.
11. If your issue is resolved, then you may delete the Test hardware profile from System Properties and perform the same set of steps to remove and redetect the display driver when you restart into your original hardware configuration.
12. If these steps do not correct the problem, then remove the Test hardware profile and see the section in this article entitled "Contact the Manufacturer of the Display Adapter."

FiX Problems with Virtual Memory

This post provide further information about computer repair services for fix computer issues. today topic focus on virtual memory problems. It may sometimes happen that the system give ‘out of memory’ messages on trying to load a program, or give a message about Virtual memory space being low. Possible causes of this are:

The setting for Maximum Size of the page file is too low, or there is not enough disk space free to expand it to that size.

The page file has become corrupt, possibly at a bad shutdown. In the Virtual Memory settings, set to “No page file,” then exit System Properties, shut down the machine, and reboot. Delete PAGEFILE.SYS (on each drive, if more than just C:), set the page file up again and reboot to bring it into use.

The page file has been put on a different drive without leaving a minimal amount on C:.

There is trouble with third party software. In particular, if the message happens at shutdown, suspect a problem with Symantec’s Norton Live update, for which there is a fix posted here. It is also reported that spurious messages can arise if NAV 2004 is installed. If the problem happens at boot and the machine has an Intel chipset, the message may be caused by an early version (before version 2.1) of Intel’s “Application Accelerator.” Uninstall this and then get an up-to-date version from Intel’s site.

Another problem involving Norton Antivirus was recently discovered by MS-MVP Ron Martell. However, it only applies to computers where the pagefile has been manually resized to larger than the default setting of 1.5 times RAM — a practice we discourage. On such machines, NAV 2004 and Norton Antivirus Corporate 9.0 can cause your computer to revert to the default settings on the next reboot, rather than retain your manually configured settings. (Though this is probably an improvement on memory management, it can be maddening if you don’t know why it is happening.) Symantec has published separate repair instructions for computers with NAV 2004 and NAV Corporate 9.0 installed. [Added by JAE 2/21/06.]

• Possibly there is trouble with the drivers for IDE hard disks; in Device Manager, remove the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers (main controller) and reboot for Plug and Play to start over.

• With an NTFS file system, the permissions for the page file’s drive’s root directory must give “Full Control” to SYSTEM. If not, there is likely to be a message at boot that the system is “unable to create a page file.”

Tips For Computer Problem Troubleshooting

There are some basic computer problem troubleshooting techniques you can perform yourself before calling your local tech support hotline. Before starting out it is important to know basic information about your computer. You need to know whether it is a Mac or a PC. You need to know who the manufacturer is, whether you have a white box, a dell, an IBM, etc. You should also know what kind of a Pentium computer it is and what operating system you have installed. You need to know how much memory and how large a hard drive you have in the computer. All of this information should either be written somewhere, or should be in your manufacturer's manual. Armed with this information you are then ready to embark on your troubleshooting endeavors.

Things to Keep in Mind

You should always remember what you were doing when the error occurred. If possible, write down the error messages for the technical department if necessary. Were you working on a document on your hard drive, or on the network?

Ok now that we have that settled lets try a few things

1. Reboot (turn the machine off and then on again) - Believe it or not but this resolves most computer problems.
2. Run a Virus check, but first run a virus update. You can usually get your virus updated online
3. Try to decide on the area of the problem. Determine if it's a network problem, a hardware problem, or a software problem. You can determine if it's a network problem very easily by checking to see if the computer is on the network. Network problems are the usual culprits for Internet problems.
4. If your computer doesn't start up, then you should look behind it and make sure that all the cables are plugged firmly into the computer. Make sure that the computer is plugged into the outlet (sometimes the cleaning crew messes this stuff up)
5. Check to see if you get any lights on the computer. If the computer lights turn on, but the computer won't start and you have no sound, then you probably need to replace the power supply. You should call a repair technician to have it replaced.
6. If your computer freezes in the operating system. Try rebooting your system and as it reboots press F8 to see if it will go into safe mode, from there uninstall the application you installed that caused the problem, or reboot.

If none of the above tips work at least you are better informed and can give technical support the information they need to help you. The most important thing is to remain calm and to pay attention to what the computer is doing, so you can help the technician help you in your computer problem troubleshooting.