Screen distorted after installing restore disk!

[Vallos]

Greetings,

First and foremost, I'm by no means a computer geek. I have a limited amount of computer know-how. Therefore, please bear with me. I'm really hoping someone can help out.

I recently have gotten an E Machine computer off from ebay. Its a 600mhz intel celeron with 32 megs of memory and a 10 gig hardrive. After hooking up the computer, everything was in order and the computer was sound after 7 plus hours of tinkering with the Win ME OS. During that time I noticed a lot of junk files from the previous owner and decided to use the restore disk to basically start the hard drive clean for my use. I had done this before with my previous computer with no problems.

Now however, the screen is distroted beyond belief. I cannot see where to click. It does seem everything is in order because I do see some colors and images and the sound is in check. It asks me "How can I help You?" This leads me to believe that perhaps the reinstallation of the drivers was too much for my old Acer 55 14 inch Moniter. Could that be it? Again it was working fine before that with the same moniter. So what did I do? Is it completely ruined?

 

[Lostman]

#1, what screen res are you running at?
#2, you really need more memory. 32megs isn't enough for WinMe. Not even close. Go pick up a 128 meg chip (that board should handle at least that) of PC100 memory. You can get it for real cheap now.
#3, do a new install. If you did a restore off of another system then the hardware drivers being refrenced on that restore disk won't be correct. So it's probably a bad video driver. So I suggest formatting and reinstalling your OS.

I do not think it is a monitor issue. They just don't "go out" like that. It usually takes a bit of time and you can see a degragation in it's performance.

 

[Vallos]

#1, what screen res are you running at?

Not sure. WHile checking, however, it was at 800x?

#2, you really need more memory. 32megs isn't enough for WinMe. Not even close. Go pick up a 128 meg chip (that board should handle at least that) of PC100 memory. You can get it for real cheap now.

I thought that as well. That will be my next step when I get this issue resolved. Remeber though, Win ME was already up and running fine before my idiotic blunder! :Mad:

#3, do a new install. If you did a restore off of another system then the hardware drivers being refrenced on that restore disk won't be correct. So it's probably a bad video driver. So I suggest formatting and reinstalling your OS.

The restore disk is the original for this computer. So that is not the problem. But even if that is the case, how do I do anything with the screen in its current condition? How do I format?

Oh and thanks so much for the reply!!!

 

[Apokalipse]

you said you got an E-Machine, they are not very good.
who told you to format? you won't really need to.

 

[Apokalipse]

also, Windows ME is a very bad Operating system (even Microsoft has stopped supporting it) so at the very least you should get Windows 98, although Windows XP is a much better Operating System and I would highly reccomend that.
XP already comes with its own drivers so Video problems are a lot lower.

 

[Apokalipse]

other things you should know:
1. Celeron Processors are not very good
2. 128 would be considered the Minimum amount of RAM disk space
3. restore disks should only be used on the computer if it has it's original hardware

I think what may have happened with your display is that the drivers (the files that tell the computer how to run your hardware) that had been installed were not designed for the monitor or video card you have, they were designed for a different type.
try and download newer drivers from the internet for both your video card and your monitor
to find out the names of all your hardware devices right click on "my computer" then go to Hardware, then "Device Manager"
double click on the type of hardware you are looking for (in this case Display Adapters) then it will be in the list

 

[Vallos]

That would be great but how can I do anything with the screen in its current condition. I can't see anything to allow me to point and click. The best analogy would be that it resembles a marbled cake. The screen is a marbled mess of lines and images. I need to get rid of that in order to do anything.

I'm now begining to think that its not fixable!

Thanks!

 

[Apokalipse]

does this not happen until Windows loads?

you wanted to have a clean system.
If you can try and get an actual Operating System CD (not a restore CD) and when you install it should have it's own default drivers; not very good, but you should at least have a 'normal' display.
I would suggest you get either:
Windows 98 (second hand or from a swap meet) - if you don't want to spend too much
Windows XP - actually has MUCH better default drivers (XP will detect all of the display modes your monitor and video card are capable of) and the Operating System itself performs much better and a lot more resistant to crashing, especially against Windows 98 or ME
- I personally would prefer paying more and getting XP

 

[Apokalipse]

do you know how to install Windows?

 

[spfd]

dude, eww, how much did u pay for that emachine?