Recovering from an Unsuitable Video Display Choice

You can choose the Windows NT Setup icon in Program Manager to change the type of video driver, the color depth, or the resolution for a display adapter. If you make an unsuitable choice, one of the following two events occurs:

• The driver will not recognize the card and will, therefore, fail to load at system startup. By default, the system tries to load VGA in base mode as a kind of reserve. So, if your video choice fails, the computer will start in VGA. Screen resolution will not be what you'd like, but you can run Windows NT Setup from Program Manager to try another option. (This only happens on an x86-based computer.)
• Or, the driver will recognize the card and proceed as though the parameters selected are acceptable. But because they're not (for example, you tried to use 1280x1024 resolution on a monitor that is only capable of 1024x768), you can't see anything on your screen, although the system starts just fine. (This is what always happens on a RISC-based computer when an inappropriate option is chosen but can also occur on an x86-based computer.)

If you can't see anything on screen after changing the display settings, do not attempt to log on. Instead, wait for the disk activity to stop, and then use the power switch to restart the computer; then follow the instructions in "Starting a System with Configuration Problems," earlier in this chapter. Then you can run Windows NT Setup from Program Manager to try another choice.