screen resolution - clean install

phantom pooper

Hi, I recently got a dell inspiron 1720 with vista pre-installed, so i took it off and put on windows xp. but now my screen resoluion wont go beyond 1024 X 768, even though im on a 17".

does anyone know a way to increase resolution beyond what the display settings offer?

any help would be a life saver!

spartacus93

you probably don't have the right video card drivers installed. Download new ones from the dell site.

Overheal

phantom pooper wrote: »

Hi, I recently got a dell inspiron 1720 with vista pre-installed, so i took it off and put on windows xp. but now my screen resoluion wont go beyond 1024 X 768, even though im on a 17".

does anyone know a way to increase resolution beyond what the display settings offer?

any help would be a life saver!

If you can recover the original installation: do. Otherwise you have just voided a number of your OEM warranties (i think - check with Dell specifically). besides that its just throwing away about $250 worth of pre-installed software.

Beyond that you have to be sure that your drivers are compatible with XP - especially with the newer 8+ series graphics cards some OEMs are not bothering to provide driver support under XP.

Have fun!

phantom pooper

thanks spartacus, that worked like a charm... dell did provide all the drivers on cd, but only for vista so i had to go to the website.

Overheal, yeah, i was sad to get rid of vista, it looked lovely and i wanted it to work the same - but just way to many issues - nightmare os. i still can revert i think, tho.

Overheal

phantom pooper wrote: »

thanks spartacus, that worked like a charm... dell did provide all the drivers on cd, but only for vista so i had to go to the website.

Overheal, yeah, i was sad to get rid of vista, it looked lovely and i wanted it to work the same - but just way to many issues - nightmare os. i still can revert i think, tho.

Ah see..

What issues were you having we may be able to help you out there.

phantom pooper

okay, well i have 2GIGs of RAM, 1.83 duo processor.

problems encountered:

-visual studio 2008 took 5 installation attemps for every package to finally install.
-3d studio max wouldnt install at all
-skype took a few installation goes
-playing music on windows media player jumped a lot.

if these issues got sorted, i would consider reverting back to vista.... it does look lovely after all.

just as a matter of interest. whats your opinion on vista.

thanks for the help

Overheal

Okay:

- Running VS 2005 on mine. The installation was not the smoothest nor did it work for a good while (major compiler issues) but it worked in the end. It should be noted each component for VS took a long time to unpack itself and install: the Service pack upgrades for example took more than an hour just to get to "are you sure you want to install?" but once you get to that its only 2 minutes to complete. Never figured out why, but its just a bitch. Reformatted my machine again in february so I tried the install again: same issues but they must have patched it or I did it in a cleaner order or something because it runs code fine now.

- 3d Studio Max: havent tried. Will investigate.
- I have definitely installed skype on here before the last reformat. No hassle.
- WMP: I noticed that on my dad's dell machine: it would skip profusely about 7 seconds before the end of every song. I never found a workaround besides a different media player. Fortunately my laptop doesnt suffer the same problem; but video playback can be a bit jumpy at times in WMP - the workaround for that is just to use the VLC player (which is must-have software anyway for multi-region DVD playback)

My opinions on Vista: I like it. Its not withot its quirks, but neither was XP. It might have been my old refurbished PC or a combination of the two but it seemed like every few days my computer was throwing up challenges for me to deal with - glitches to strange behaviors to BSOD: it was almost a battle of wills. I became the computer geek I am today by level-grinding on my old XPC

I like many of the new features on offer in Vista: I disagree or dont use a few more. For example, I live and breathe by the new indexed start bar. I dont bother with the Gadget bar or the useless window flippy thing. The task manager has a lot of new monitoring options which I like. The disk Defrag seems like its been downgraded as theres no visual feedback or even an estimated time to completion or anything: just a please wait icon. So Ive never run it. Ever. But it did convince me to go find third party defragging tools: and those are better than anything that was on offer by XP's old tool. WMP 11: seems like a completely different program. And if you have a semi-large collection scrolling through it requires more system resourses than I care to give it. What it is very good at is it will automagically deteck other libraries in your network: for example the taskbar will popup and say Hey we found an Xbox! or Hey your flatmates PC is online wanna listen to his tunes?

If you dig deeper theres also some great things to be found in the control panel, such as now you can partition your disks right inside windows without any third part or DOS interaction. The power options for laptops are pretty extensive (not mind blowing but definitely useful) and if you have a tablet PC or you get a pen tablet plugin the software suppoprt for that built into vista is pretty neat: handwriting for example is really easy to access. The other thing is Networking seems much easier than it ever did (personally). Much of it is very automated and takes the niggly bits out of it for you. I remember trying to make a wireless connection between to XP machines once (no router) it was a nightmare but now its just like click bloop done. Then you have UAC and a 2-way firewall which keeps you nice and secure.

It really is a nice OS - they try to take a lot of the hassle out for you and to their credit I think its coming along nicely. I was ready to roll back to XP (for VS 2005) when I first got the machine too - but was stopped by the issue in my first post. The workaround I used at that time was to run XP inside Virtual PC (available on the microsoft Website). So vista was allowed a few months to grow on me. And it did.

Would I go back to XP? I don't really see why I would anymore.

phantom pooper

thanks Overheal,

a revert might be on the cards eventually, but i feel pretty well accommodated for on xp at the moment. things are running smoother, but i still havent got my resolution quite right - the text is a little too small and there is a slight (very slight, but i dont like it) blur on 1440 X 990 and everything is skewed in lower resolutions.

so, yeah i will go back up, but i think ill bide my time - i need reliability and familiarity for the next few weeks as my output levels need to be pretty high, but then ill be going back up i think.

ill post back and let you know how the re-vistaisation goes - i noticed a scratch out of the packet on my re-installation CD. i shoulda just created a new partition, i do have 250 gigs.

thanks again.

gamer

USE VLC or realplayer to play cds.see if theres an xp graphics driver on driverguide.com.
it took 3 years for winxp to become stable,ms 1st release of any os always has bugs,missing drivers,id say winxp s alot faster than vista on a new pc.WILL there be a 3d studio max version optimised for vista released in future, with that hd you could set 2 partitions,dual boot vista,and winxp.its well known certain progs dont work on vista, maybe theres a vista patch for 3dmax.