[Robert Seely]

I have a 3 year old desktop -- 2.7GHZ, 512MB Ram, 40GB HD. No hardware problems -- puter runs great.

But, I decided to "wipe out the HD and start over" because it was loaded with garbage and slowing down somewhat. So I restored the original Windows XP Home Addition (SP1) I bought a couple years ago. No problems. I then installed Windows Update and Ran all the updates (63 updates). No problems. Installed Norton Ghost and backed up the whole thing to an external HD (just to make sure I had a good restore point). Downloaded and installed SP2. Rebooted and the display is FUBAR (messed up). It is set at minimum resolution AND it will not allow me to change the resolution in Control Panel > Display > Settings. I checked EVERYTHING out. Everything runs perfectly, but the display is so awful, I'm going to have to restore my ghost backup if I cannot figure out what's wrong.

Anyway, this really bugs (as you can probably imagine) and I am hoping somebody can offer me some suggestions on how to get out of this predicament without going back to SP1. BTW, I now NEED to upgrade to SP2, because I bought the MS Home Edition Office so that I could use MS-Word and MS-Excel. I tried to install it on SP1, but it immediately informed me this was a "no-no" and that I had to upgrade to SP2.

Thanks for reading my sob story -- and thanks in advance for any guidance you can offer.

Robert.

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Download new drivers for the graphics.

[Neil Jones]

Download new drivers for the graphics.

[Robert Seely]

Thanks for the reply Neil, but I am a casual user with some PC technical knowledge, but fall far short of "expertise" Can you be any more specific? how do I determine which driver for which graphics I need? Also, why would I need to do this? Obviously the proper driver was there prior to my upgrade to SP2 -- since this is an upgrade, why would the proper drive have been deleted during the upgrade? Or is this just how MS works these days?????

Again, thanks for the dialog.

Robert.

[Troy]

Driver updates occur frequently, particularly in the graphics division...

Do you know what graphics you have on your system? Like, do you have a separate graphics card or is the graphics integrated onto the motherboard? If you don't know this, download Everest Home Edition and run it.

http://www.majorgeek...wnload4181.html

Once in, select the "Report" button (up the top), then when the wizard comes up, select Next, System Summary Only, Plain Text, Finish. A new page will replace the wizard, save it to file (on your desktop). Then copy/paste the top half of the text into your next reply.

[Robert Seely]

Thanks guys, I found my solution.........

I browsed the ORIGINAL Windows install disk that shipped with the computer, and found the driver there. Just ran it real quickly and PRESTO, problem resolved.

My computer is now functioning perfectly (so far as I can tell). Kinda bugs that doing an "upgrade" to SP2 causes my old driver to disappear. Makes me wonder what else may have disappeared that I won't find until I try "that certain something" again.

Thanks again, over and OUT!

[Troy]

Well done, glad you got it working. Thanks for letting us know.