Some modern PC's come with so called "restoration cd's", I have a Gateway pc and when I put in the restoration cd I get a menu that lets me install the video drivers for my video card. Not everyone is this fortunate, the following steps are for those who don't have a restoration cd:

You'll have to go to your video card manufacturer's website and download the latest drivers for your video card, not every driver will work for every video card, you have to download the exact right driver for your video card.

Identifying your video card: Before you can install any drivers for the video you'll need to know what the name and model number of the video card is. In most cases, when you put your computer on, the first thing that flashes on the top of the screen is the type of video card you've got and the amount of video RAM on it. You will have to be fast to read this. On the TX Pro and TX Pro II motherboards (with the on board video) you will get a string of numbers at the bottom of the screen a second or two after turning the power on. Included in this list of numbers will be the date of the BIOS and usually, towards the end, the model number of the video card. It could read something like M571.

Installing the drivers:

For the S3 or the Matrox - you should have a floppy or CD with the drivers. For the TXPro motherboards with the on board M571 video - you will need to use the motherboard CD (you will have either a  purple or a red and black CD) or silver. The installation procedure for all of these is the same. Identify the directory on the CD (or floppy) where the video drivers are stored. A bit of intuition helps here. When browsing through the CD look for directories that have key words like VGA, Windows 95 etc.

On PI budget computers supplied by us the most common card is the M571. The M571 drivers are installed by going into the vga\m571 directory on the driver CD and running the setup.exe file (For more help on installing drivers using setup file see section below). On the PII computers supplied by us the most common card is the 4 MB AGP 3D card. The drivers for our 4 MB 3D AGP Video card are on the driver CD (either purple or red & black), in a directory called vga\agp3d or vga\agp-pro or similar sounding directory. The only other video cards we've ever supplied are the S3, the Matrox Mystique/Millennium, and the Diamond Stealth Edge 3D. The S3 and the Matrox come with their own help files in the form of txt files on the driver disk. The Diamond Stealth card has it's own unconventional installation procedure - click here for Diamond Stealth. 

PII computers with the BX Pro 100 MHz motherboard come with a silver CD. We are updating this page shortly with information on this new graphics adapter which was supplied with all PII machines after 27/11/98.

Installing from exe file: If the video directory has a Setup.exe or Install.exe file you will need to run this Setup/Install program. 

Installing from ini file: Go to the Control Panel, choose Add New Hardware and select No to Windows detecting the hardware for you. You will then need to select the type of hardware you wish to install, which in our case here, is the Display Adapters. You will then get the Add New Hardware Wizard screen where you will need to click on Browse/Have Disk and navigate your way through to the directory where the video ini file is stored. Here you may be presented with a choice of various devices. If you know the exact model number of your card then just proceed by clicking on it. Follow instructions on screen and re-boot the computer when asked. You may need your Windows 95 installation disk/s at this stage. Occasionally, on rebooting the computer may ask for the video directory again when what it actually needs is the Windows 98 installation disk. The reverse happens as well. Keep both the video installation and the Windows 98 disks handy. 

After Installation: After installation of a video card you may find that it is not automatically accepted into the control panel as the video card you are using. Go to the Control Panel, click on Systems and then on Device Manager and scroll down to Display Adapters and verify that you have the correct name of your video card. If you don't you can change it by double clicking on the device listed, then choosing the driver tab, then the Update Driver box. You should get the Update Device Driver Wizard screen. Choose "No, select driver from list", and then the driver you want should come up in a list (provided it has been installed correctly). You may have to restart the computer for changes to be recognized.

What to do if the screen goes fuzzy and you can't see a thing in Windows? 

This could be possibly because you've installed the wrong video drivers and/or have set the resolution/colours/refresh rate too high for your monitor to handle. Fortunately you'll find that you can still start the computer up in safe mode to correct this problem. (Read your Windows 95 manual for details on how to do this). You can start up your computer in safe mode using the F8 key provided you press it at the right time. When booting you'll need to wait for the line Starting Windows 98 to appear on screen and then keep tapping the F8 key till you get a menu where you can choose the mode of starting up. Once you've started up in safe mode you'll be able to make changes to your video settings and restart the machine for the changes to be recognized.