Hi, I am new to this board. I came upon it searching for a way to get into the bios of a Compaq Pressario system. I am trying to change the display settings for a friend. I have no idea how they got changed to the 16 bit, but they will not change back to 256? I have checked for viruses, ran Norton Systemworks on it & once in awhile when you reboot it, it will reboot in safe mode. I am hoping someone has an idea of what is wrong or how to correct the problem. Besides that, they system runs fine. A little slow, but no errors. Btw, it is Win 98 SE. TIA for anyones help!

I don't really see any reason to try to get in the BIOS of that machine, the display settings are Operating-System specific, so they can't be changed in the BIOS.

By the way, 16bit colors is WAY better than 256, especially on these days when a lot of people have 19" monitors or run at 1600x1200 @ 32bit !

I would just suggest the same old dumb thing, try to see if the latest video drivers are installed on your friend's machine and if not, update them. Don't use any ou-of-range display settings, as a too high refresh frequency or too high resolution for example.

Anyway, any of those problems have nothing to do with the BIOS of the machine.

Oh and welcome to Techspot, by the way

Ty for making me feel welcome, I mistyped though, it is 16 not 16 bit

Anyway, if it is not the drivers, etc stuff, what else could be wrong with it? Could it be the video card is going?

Ok for 16, that's right then

if the video card is recognized right and installed and the drivers are installed you can't just have 16 colors !

16 colors mode is used when no drivers are installed or when the drivers installed do not support the video card.

what is the video card that you have in that computer ?

don't kill me righ away if you know, but the display properties you tried to change in the BIOS are located in the control panel > display or on the desktop > right click > properties and then ,advanced tab

Hmm, I will have to look when I get home. I am at work, I am thinking the drivers need to be updated......

Let me give you a little more insight.

He had me look at it because his American Greetings Cards program started popping up that it needed to run in 800 x 600. He claims he did not change or do anything to it to make it change (boy I hear that a lot) lol. So, could a driver just get lost? Or could a change in the computer make it happen?

I really appreciate your time & help btw! Thanks so much!!!