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I can only get 16 colors. Need 256. The resolution bar will not move up either. Need at least 800x600. What do I need to do? Just got computer going after 3 months of being down and now I can't see anything because of this. Appreaciate help. Thanks

If you hover your mouse on the "my computer" icon and click with your left mousebutton to select it just once, then with your right mousebutton click again just once. You then get an pop screen with ussually on the bottom the properties.

Hover your mouse there till it changes color and click the properties.
Then you should see a screen with tabthingy's.

One of them is Hardware. Click it till it shows you the tab for hardware, then select device manager.
In this list windows shows you the installed devices. Now you need to look for Display adapters.

What is installed there?
If t states a Grapic card installed there, the next thing you might want to look at how old the driver is and if you have direcx 9.0c installed.

To find out if you have dx installed, you can go start/ run and type dxdiag and seewich dx version you have installed.

I hope this helps you a bit:)

Thanks Krank, Big help but still need more. Display Adapt-Std PCI 640x480. Can,t raise it. And then I hit button to test Direct Draw and it told me I needed 256 colors to test. Thats the problem. I can only get 16. VGA driver=4.10 and after download of update it told me I was up to date. Direct X version =6.1 and monitor is Daewoo 17". At the end of my rope. The 2 last problems. Been trying to fix all day. Sincerely

Looks like the problem is your display adapter or the drivers for it. If you can find out who the manufacturer is you may be able to DL new drivers for it from the Internet.

If not, you may need a new Display card.

I would start with downloading the latest dx version, you can find it here

.http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3F2828FA-0E3C-4837-AFC0-6C67DCAA54BF&displaylang=en

But if you want me to take a closer look at what could be wrong, you also can upload/attach or send me the dx file and i look into it:)

But a dx version of 6.something is alway's worth updating

edit:
I assumed when writing this post you have Windows xp and now realized you may have Windows 98 running, if you dont have Windows Xp, you need to google for dx or search on the microsoft site for the correct one.

Wich bring me to this question:
Are you working with a computer wich has an onboard graphic?
If so you need to look in your bios, but before i explain how to sort that out, i honestly would like to see the dx text file where you got this information, so that i wont give you the wrong information. If something goes wrong in the bios, its hard to get it working again.
Is this a fairly new or old system? hardware speaking.

Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks guys, I been working on this for 3 days. Be lost without you. Adapter is integral. Found graphic driver and dl. Turns out to be a Zip. Can't open. And do I install it if I can get it open? Do I need to dl a Zip File Manger now and is there a charge for it?
Will attenpt to upload the dx file later to ya krank and yes for now I only have 98SE. I looked for dx9 and found it to take 4 hrs so I'll try later. Onboard graphic? If you mean no card and integral yes. Date on back of Dell comp 4 05 00. Think I need to get through the driver install 1st before the bios. Merry Chrismas or who you would perfer. Sincerely

You need a decompression routine. WinXP has one built in but Win98se and before doesn't.

Try these links:

FilZip - free

WinZip - shareware. This is one of the ones I recommend.

WinRar - shareware. This one is one of the few I've actually purchased.

free-winzip - Various other options. Haven't tried any of these.

As far as dx9, I would be happy to DL it for you and put it on a CD. Seems a waste of a CD though just to put one program on it. Perhaps we can get together some time and find enough programs/files/information that you need that we can fill the CD before I burn it. Give me a call.

Hi, I use ZipCentral http://zipcentral.iscool.net/ for most of my Zip files. It does however seem to have problems with very large zip files [ie. 100Mb plus], but this should be fine for what you want to do. Did I mention it's free?

Hopefully the zip file will contain an install program which will do all the setting up for you. You will need to extract all the files inside the zip to a folder before you can use them.

However if there is not a setup program then you will need to return to Device Manager as Krank described earlier and double-click on your graphics card, click the 'Driver' tab along the top and click 'update driver' then point it towards your folder containing the unzipped files.

You will probably be asked for your Windows98 Cd at some point, and then to re-start. After the re-start assming all went well you should now be able to change the number of colours and your screen size.

Unless you are plannig on playing games, you shouldn't need to update Direct-X. When you install most games if it is required direct-x is usually installed automatically, although this may not be the newest version.

Good luck, let us know how you get on.