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I changed my screen resolution from 800x600 to 1280x1074 and now Windows starts up but there is no display and a message comes on a black screen saying Input not supported. I can only start Windows in safe mode.

I checked in safe mode but there was no restore point available. I am using Windows 7. How can I get my screen resolution back?

EDIT: i tried setting the resolution to 800x600 in safe mode and rebooting but still the screen remains black. Also i enabled the 600x480 mode but still the same.

lovesh
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2 Answers2

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Try changing the registry keys that holds the resolution information for the display:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Hardware Profiles\UnitedVideo\CONTROL\VIDEO
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Hardware Profiles\UnitedVideo\CONTROL\VIDEO

Each of these branches contains several keys relating to the resolution:

DefaultSettings.XResolution
DefaultSettings.YResolution

Reboot into safe mode. Export the whole branch to make a backup incase something goes wrong. Find all the keys with the resolution that is not working, and set them to the resolution that worked. Reboot.

Richie Frame
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You should be using VGA mode, not Safe mode.

  • Safe mode: Your system is bootstrapped using the generic VGA device driver, vga.sys, which of course doesn't know how to take advantage of whatever non-VGA capabilities your display adapter has in the first place.
  • VGA mode: Your system is bootstrapped using the proper, installed, device driver for your display adapter, but with the display mode forced to a VGA 640×480 8-bit colour mode.

Changing the display resolution used by vga.sys does not change the display resolution used by your actual display device driver. Display resolutions are (of course) per-adapter things, and an adapter driven by the generic VGA driver is not necessarily considered the same as an adapter driven by its proper device driver. Their settings are saved under different names.

Bring up your system in VGA mode, without Safe mode, and then, from the Windows Explorer Control Panel, re-set the display resolution as desired.

JdeBP
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