3: Implementing, Managing and Troubleshooting Hardware Devices and Drivers

Table of Contents

1. Disk Management
2. Disk Management Functions
3. Troubleshooting Disks and Volumes
4. Backup and Restore
5. CD-ROM and DVD Devices
6. Removable Media
7. Display Devices
   1. Multiple Monitor Support
   2. Troubleshooting Multiple Displays
8. Mobile Computer Hardware
9. Input and Output Devices
10. Updating Drivers
11. Multiple CPUs

Display Devices

When Windows XP is being installed, your system's BIOS selects the primary video display adapter. You can install and configure additional video adapters using the Display applet or the Add Hardware applet in Control Panel.

There are three major reasons for video problems:

• an incorrect video device driver has been installed.

• display settings for the video adapter have been configured wrongly.

• the graphics hardware acceleration setting has been set too high.

Any of these can cause your Windows XP system to become unusable or crash.

Fortunately, Windows XP offers several ways to restore the previous video display settings. If you reboot the system and press the F8 key as Windows XP is restarting, you can select one of the following options from the Windows Advanced Options menu:

• Safe Mode: allows you to manually update, remove or roll back the problem video driver.

• Enable VGA Mode: allows you to boot the system using standard VGA 640×480 resolution with 16 colors. You can then correct any problem video settings.

• Last Known Good Configuration: allows you to set the system's Registry and device driver configurations back to how they were the last time a user started the computer and logged on successfully.

Next: Multiple Monitor Support