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Help! I stupidly changed video driver to nothing


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#1
clydec

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Hello all and I hope you can help.

My significant other (SO) gave her old desktop computer to her father for web surfing. It's a Dell running Windows XP Home Edition.

When we booted it up, the resolution on the 14" crt was wacky. It has not yet been hooked into the net. Everything on the screen appeared large. I went to settings, display properties, settings and tried to adjust the screen resolution with the slider bar but that was disabled. I believe I then went to advanced, driver, and saw but one option in the drop down window for driver. I then somehow clicked it off and then restarted the computer.

You guessed it. After seeing the initial Windows start page, I get nothing. I've even tried hitting F8 while it's booting to try and get into safe mode but I still get nothing. And yes, the display is powered up.

Any idea how I can correct my boneheaded move?

Thanks for the help.

Clyde
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#2
ethaneh

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if every thing was really really big its because it was having video card problems and the drive wasnt installed (some motherboard come with a small driver built into it so you can install the acutal driver) so the fact that you are getting nothing is strange you should try booting to your driver cd if you have it and installing it that way i hope you understand all of this
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#3
clydec

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The computer was working fine when it was last in use at my SO's house. She put it in the closet when she and her daughter got laptops.

The computer is a few years old. It might be 5 years. I'm not sure, it pre-dates me. The original software that came with it, whatever she may have had, is seemingly long gone.

Could this be something that I could recover by hitting F2 or F11 at startup? I anticipate that I'll need to update the drivers when it's hooked into the net but I need to get it back to at least where it was with the messed up resolution in order to update anything.

Thanks,
Clyde
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#4
Tyger

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If you can get on line go to the Dell website for Drivers and Downloads and put the service tag # for that machine in and download and install any drivers you need. If you can't get on line with that machine, use another machine to follow the same procedure but make a CD or DVD with all the driver executable files on it, then run them on the Dell.
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#5
clydec

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Thanks very much Tyger, I'll try that. No, I can't get online with that machine being blind but I can get on with another. I'll attempt to get the numbers and go from there.
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#6
happyrock

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you could also try setting the bios to the default settings...sometimes they're called optimized or safe settings
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#7
clydec

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Hi all, and thanks for the help.

So here's where I stand currently. Had a chance to go and try to correct the problem. Was able to get into both the F12 settings and the F2 setup menus.

Really didn't see any good options on the F12 settings menu to try and reset the default settings or change anything else. Tried the F2 setup. Went into " Integrated Devices-Legacy Select Options" and was able to access the Primary Video Controller. I had two options - Auto (which it was set to) and Onboard.

I changed it from Auto to Onboard, allowed it to boot and no change. Shut it down, reset it to Auto, allowed it to boot and no change.

I have the service tag number and can download new drivers from another computer for the broken one, but the problem is I can't see the display to install anything.

Is there an option I'm missing on the F2 or F12 options at startup where I can find or access the optimized or safe settings?

Thanks,
Clyde
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