Peenie Wallie

Two weeks ago, I re-installed Windows XP on my home PC.

There's a bit more to that story I never got to writing about, but here are some previous entries about it:

"Ubuntu" February 27, 2008

"Winodws" March 20, 2008

"PC Linux OS 2007" March 24, 2008

"Windows Genuine Headache" March 25, 2008

This morning, I started up the computer, and the display was 800 x 600. There was a pop-up message saying

Your computer's screen resolution and color depth are currently set to a very low level.
You can get a better picture by increasing these settings.
To do so, click this balloon.

Needless to say, clicking on the balloon didn't fix anything. Nor was I able to change the display settings from the video properties panel.

The driver was still the same

ForceWare Release 169 WHQL
Version: 169.21
Release Date: December 19, 2007

which is available at www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.21.html

When I tried to re-install the drive with the file I had, I got some error message about it being corrupt. Fortunately, I was able to download and install another copy of the driver, which fixed everything.

Interestingly, though, while file I downloaded on March 29 is "169.21_forceware_winxp_32bit_english_whql.exe," the one I downloaded this morning is "169.21_forceware_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe"

After re-installing the beta version of the driver, I can now run the install file that was supposedly corrupt a few minutes before.