Chaos Overlords Screwed My Display

[7th Guest]

I actually posted this in the thread for that specific game, perhaps posting it here is more appropriate, correct me if I'm wrong...

The game crashed after some sort of error, and my display is in utter disarray... it's as though everything has been shifted to the left so that 40% of the desktop is visible, and the remainder of the screen is black. Also, everything is also fuzzy-like and illegible, like sort of a mirage effect.

After rebooting NOTHING changes.

IF I lower screen res to 800X600 the mirage effect is gone, but changing to a higher resolution makes the display go crazy again. Apparently this game's native resolution is SVGA, and since it's windows-based it sort of messes with your resolution prior to running.

Could this have something to do with the .reg file? What, if anything, can be done? Any Suggestions?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Try manually changing your screen settings back to the correct values.

I have encountered something like that myself, but this seems to relate to my monitor running on 800x600 in combination with certain color depths.

This definitely has nothing to do with the system registry.

[Guest]

Hey, thanks for replying.

I toyed around with screen settings and anything higher than 1280X768 (regardless of color depth), leads to the display being displaced to the left, there's also that odd "heat wave" effect and what appear to be scanlines.

Where could the problem lie, if not the registry? It's so bizarre that a game would permanently affect screen settings like that.

[Eagle of Fire]

The problem is likely to originate from your monitor itself. The way you are saying, I'd bet that your monitor is broken. If it's somewhat old, I'd look for a new one.

Did you try moving the screen manually to the right position? If your monitor don't have wheels or buttons to do so, then don't even hesitate and buy a recent one.

[7th Guest]

I don't believe it's the monitor since newer directx games work fine at high resolutions, plus there aren't any anomalies at 1280X768 and below. This appears to be limited to the windows GUI at higher resolutions, for some reason. :crazy:

I'm pretty sure this happened as a direct result of running that game, but who knows. :crazy:

(someone, please?) :cry:

[Nikson]

If other games run fine in high res, that's just freaky!
Try uninstalling and reinstalling all your graphics drivers (monitor, graphics card, directx)

[Lucullus]

I've encountered this problem rarely but sometimes it happens when a game is actually written for a specific resolution. What happens is a little mishap between Windows and the game... windows think that the resolution is being changed and thus keep the resolution as it was in the game eg. 800x600 or so.
To be honest I don't think there is any fix for that except for changing the resolution manually after playing the game. Could be wrong but perhaps a full cd version of the game would work better.

[Honkers]

I've had that happen with Civ3. If you can adjust your monitor settings manually, try moving the display back to where it was. If not... Try testing on a different monitor to see if it is the monitor.

[The Fifth Horseman]

there's also that odd "heat wave" effect and what appear to be scanlines.
Check your monitor specifications, make sure it is capable of running in resolutions that high (but why would you want anything above 1024x768 is beyond me).

[dmacdonald95]

Uh, yeah. Scanlines sounds like refresh rate to me. Try this:

-> Right click on your desktop.

-> Click Properties.

-> Click settings.

-> Click advanced.

-> Click Monitor.

-> Make note of the current refresh rate.

-> Make sure the checkbox "Hide modes that this Monitor can not display" is checked.

-> Set Refresh Frequency to the lowest (If it goes lower then 60Hz, put it at 60) and see what resolution you can get to. Keep going up, but stop at whatever Refresh rate you started at, and see if any Refresh rate will get rid of the problem.

[Lucullus]

Like Civ3 then you might be able to change the resolution the game is using from the cfg file, but you should probably check the support area for the game to make sure that you aren't messing up anything.

[7th Guest]

Originally posted by dmacdonald95@Nov 9 2005, 12:06 AM
Uh, yeah. Scanlines sounds like refresh rate to me. Try this:

-> Right click on your desktop.

-> Click Properties.

-> Click settings.

-> Click advanced.

-> Click Monitor.

-> Make note of the current refresh rate.

-> Make sure the checkbox "Hide modes that this Monitor can not display" is checked.

-> Set Refresh Frequency to the lowest (If it goes lower then 60Hz, put it at 60) and see what resolution you can get to. Keep going up, but stop at whatever Refresh rate you started at, and see if any Refresh rate will get rid of the problem.
Well, that seemed to do the trick, good show!


Thanks everyone :bye: