please help me! i recently installed litestep on a windows 98 platform because i was tired of shell crashes. it defaulted to 16 colors and 640X480 screen resolution and i can't seem to change it. i have gone into display properties several times and changed it, but it just tells me that the computer has to restart for the changes to take effect, then nothing happens. i am fairly new to this field, and i would appreciate any possible help.
thanx in advance!!
Don't think this has a thing to do with Litestep, unless there's some crazy bug I've never heard of?
Anyway, make sure you have the proper video and monitor drivers installed.
Revert to the Explorer shell and confirm the issue still exists. If the issue goes away with Explorer, and comes back when switching to Litestep, then please state your video card and driver version information.
I have never heard of anything like this happening because of LS. Like xcal says, it sounds more like some video driver issue. If indeed it only happens with LS and not Explorer, maybe you have some funky video driver that for some reason needs the explorer shell to work properly, i.e. some tray app that doesn't get loaded with LS. I'm just guessing here though, I've never encountered something like that. Besides, who knows why 9x does the things it does... it doesn't necessarily need a reason ;)
Also, you are not likely to experience any improvement in stability as long as you're on Win 98. As far as I can remember, running LS under 9x was a nightmare and I doubt it's any better nowadays as most themes and modules do not even support 9x anymore. But I wish you good luck.
i re-installed the video driver, and it seems to be working fine. cross your fingers... i'm going to try switching back to litestep.
it worked! don't ask me what was wrong - the driver i installed was exactly the same as the previous one, but it seems that it fixed the problem. litestep now works fine, and looks great.
So now all you need is an OS for the current millenium, and you're all set. ;)
yeah...
I suppose i could upgrade, but my computers to slow for XP and win 2000 is giving me issues on install.
------------------------------UPDATE---------------------------------
O.K, so reinstalling the video drivers fixes my problems, but every couple months, the problem comes back. I can fix it just by reinstalling the drivers, but it is definitely a major annoyance. this happens on another computer running win 98 (without litestep), but it would correct itself after a few restarts. My computer never had issues with this until i installed litestep, so I'm wondering what might of changed with the litestep installation and what i can do to fix it. any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated. thanks in advance!
So you know it happens all the time on another computer without LS but you still think it is an LS problem? With a computer that old your HD might be dieing and it just might happen that your video drivers are in that sector. Or When you connect to Windows Update maybe M$ is pushing you a new driver that is corrupt. There are so many reasons why this could be happening to you, none of which have anything to do with LS.
COMPUTER #1
win 98se
has been having these problems for a while, corrects after 2 restarts. does not have litestep. normal windows installation. decides to stop working at random intervals. desktop computer
COMPUTER #2
win 98se - with litestep
never had any issues with video or drivers until i installed litestep. it starts up sometimes with 16 colors and 600 x 400 resolution. if you try and change the colors back, it says "windows needs to be restarted for the changes to take effect", you restart and nothing is fixed. to fix it, you have to "update drivers", than select the save drivers again.
Not a litestep issue. Outdated computer issue.
O...Good call...forgot about the ATI bug from back in the day. I thought that only made it so none of the LiteStep artifacts were drawn. Where are mian and floach when you need them?
mian and floach? ATI bug from back in the day? litestep artifacts? CONFUSED!!!!
i google seared "ati drivers" and it is giving me results for AMD drivers. according to windows, my video card is manufactured by trident microsystems, not AMD. any help or clarification would be greatly appreciated.
It sounds like your video drivers are dependant on the explorer shell. Nothing we can do about it. You can contact the video manufacturer and ask them to fix the problem. Good luck.
ATI is now owned by AMD. ATI back in the day used to sell video chips that other manufacturers, like Trident, used on their cards. This was back in the day when the drivers depended on the explorer shell. Nothing can be done really besides replace the video card. ATI fixed their drivers going forward, but couldn't going back.
the drivers work fine on litestep, i use it as a default shell, with no issues, except for the fact that every couple months, the drivers stop working, and i have to reinstall them. why would they not work with litestep, if they normally work with litestep. the errors only arise every couple months, and do not go away when i switch to the explorer shell. i have to reinstall the drivers to fix the problem, and then the display works fine... until another 2 months go by, when it breaks again.
My guess would be that there is a driver update coming in via Windows Update that is screwing everything up...but that is me.
whatever, it's no big deal anymore, now that i figured out how to fix it. just thought that LS had changed something, but it is probably just win 98, screwing with my mind. like west said "who knows why 9x does the things it does... it doesn't necessarily need a reason ;)". this is probably one of those things. could be anything from a bad hard disk area, to win update, to gates doing a scientific experiment on my mind.
BTW: my mouse drivers where having issues a month or so ago, and i decided to run scandisk. unfortunately, it got unplugged, and i never know the results. but when i booted up, the mouse worked fine. must have been something weird going on with the area of the disk where the drivers are stored(if they are all stored in the safe place), as you said earlier. no problem since this scan, although it's only been a month.
I believe that while scandisk runs it writes to the event log on the PC. Might want to check there and see if it found some bad sectors and logged them. You can also run something like PerfectDisk and see how many sectors are marked as bad.