done something stupid, please help!

[yod9999]

ok, so there i was, surfing away for nothing in particular, a bit bored. for no reason whatsoever i suddenly thought "i know, why don't i change the screen resolution to 800x600". no good reason, just did it. the screen went black - and stayed black. as if the resolution is unsupported (although it's there in the menu). i thought that if i left it it might revert back to 1200x800, but no joy.

i rebooted by holding down the power key until it went off then turning it back on. the grey startup screen came up initially, but then the screen just went black again.

any ideas how i can fix this? if it helps i've got an external firewire drive that i can boot into, but unfortunately i've not got ssh or vnc enabled.

help!!

 

[kolax]

Very odd.

You are using a MacBook I assume...you on the latest 10.4.10 update?

Sounds like a dodgy driver, but who knows.

 

[yod9999]

yeah, i'm using a macbook and i'm on 10.4.10. i didn't expect it to let me select an option that the screen wouldn't support.

just need to work out how to reset it now. is the resolution stored in a plist file somewhere?

 

[sotl]

i'm not too sure, but can't you boot up in safemode by holding down X? Again, I could be wrong.

 

[antibact1]

If you can access the drive by booting off a firewire volume, you are going to want to change the file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist

Open it using the Property List Editor and navigate to

Root -> DisplaySets->0->0

There are four components relating to height and width:
Height
Width
UnmirroredHeight
UnmirroredWidth

Change them to the values that you want (hopefully you can remember the resolution it was before).

Also, some of the mode parameters need to be changed and I'm not sure what their values are. So if this allows you to boot the system, go back into the Display menu in System Preferences and change it to another allowed resolution (likely not the 800x600 you picked before) and then immediately back to the native resolution to ensure that all the other parameters are changed appropriately.

 

[yod9999]

If you can access the drive by booting off a firewire volume, you are going to want to change the file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist

Open it using the Property List Editor and navigate to

Root -> DisplaySets->0->0

There are four components relating to height and width:
Height
Width
UnmirroredHeight
UnmirroredWidth

Change them to the values that you want (hopefully you can remember the resolution it was before).

Also, some of the mode parameters need to be changed and I'm not sure what their values are. So if this allows you to boot the system, go back into the Display menu in System Preferences and change it to another allowed resolution (likely not the 800x600 you picked before) and then immediately back to the native resolution to ensure that all the other parameters are changed appropriately.

hmm. i did this, but rather than boot from the firewire drive i booted into safe mode by holiding down shift during the boot process. i changed the values as suggested, then rebooted normally. this time i got to see the login prompt and i thought it was fixed, but after i logged in the screen went black again. is there another preferences file somewhere? i checked ~/Library/Preferences but there's no com.apple.windowserver.plist file there

cheers

 

[applecow]

try connecting to an external?

 

[yod9999]

right, thanks for people's assistance, but i've fixed it. i booted from the firewire drive, then deleted (from the original drive, not the firewire drive):

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist
~/Library/Preference/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.<hex string>.plist

then rebooted back to the internal drive and all was fine again

panic over

 

[aerove]

congrats!! lucky u!