PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Changing the Screen Area Setting

The screen area setting determines how much information is displayed on the screen by specifying the resolution of the image that the video adapter delivers to the monitor. The default resolution installed by Setup will be within the capabilities of your video adapter and monitor, but may not be optimum. Use the Screen area slider in Display Properties → Settings to change resolution. Note that the selection range is not continuous. If your monitor is Plug-N-Play-compliant and recognized by Windows 98/Me, Windows allows you to select only those discrete values that are supported by both the video adapter and monitor.

Although Windows 98/Me itself supports changing resolution on the fly, doing so requires that the video adapter and driver support that feature. Changing resolution with some older video adapters and drivers requires shutting down and restarting Windows. If this is the case with your system, Windows notifies you that a shutdown is required to put the change into effect and allows you to shutdown immediately or defer doing so. If you choose the latter, configuration changes do not take effect until you later restart the system manually.

Warning

If the monitor type is not recognized by Windows, be careful when changing resolution settings. Depending on the default monitor setting, Windows may allow you to select a resolution setting higher than the monitor actually supports. At best, this results in an unreadable display. At worst, it may ...