Laptop display issues

[Parrothead]

My laptop display has gone to 640 x 480 pixels with 4 bit color. I have opened display settings and told it to set to 1280 x 800, with 32 bit color, and it doesn't go. I have reset my computer four times now, and it's still mucked up. Oh, and it happens starting with the login screen, the hp logo and windows loading bar at startup are normal. I am running Vista and have a hp pavilion dv6000 laptop.

[Naaman]

Better to first download the latest driver and Driver Sweeper, install DS.

Reboot to safe mode (F8 after the first beep), go to "Add/remove programs and remove the graphics software - ATi, Nvidia or Intel normally. Be careful and don't touch anything that doesn't have graphics or display in the name. Cancel when it tries to reboot. Start DS and follow the instructions uninstalling only the graphics bits.

Reboot normally.

Cancel any attempts by Windows to reinstall the drivers.

Install the latest driver file and follow the instructions.


It's a little more long winded but sometimes a corrupted file won't get fixed by reinstalling the latest drivers, it may skip over the files that need replacing.

[Parrothead]

Have you reinstalled your display driver? It might be corrupted.

It worked! Thanks.

[Chromatix]

Yep. 640x480/4 is standard VGA resolution, so your computer was falling back to VGA for display when your "proper" drivers went bad.