I have a IBM 733 Pentium III running Windows ME and am having problems with my Voodoo 3 card. Whenever I try to change the colours to more than ‘256 Colours’ the computer locks up. Newer drivers, and emails to the card manufacturer have been fruitless. Is there anything you can do to help please?

The first thing to try is, to decrease the hardware acceleration for your graphics card. To do this, right-click on ‘My Computer’ (on the desktop) and in the menu which appears, click ‘Properties’. In the window which appears, click the ‘Performance’ tab and then the ‘Graphics’ button. Note the current position of the hardware acceleration slider and then move the slider down one notch and click ‘Ok’ (you may be prompted to restart your computer - if you are, then click ‘Yes). If you are unable to boot your computer after doing this you will need to boot into safe mode. To do this, when the ‘Starting Windows Me…’ message appears, hit the ‘F8′ key and then select ‘Safe Mode’ from the menu. When Windows boots, repeat the previous procedure for adjusting the hardware acceleration but move the slide back to its original position. In the more likely event that your computer boots properly, try to see if you can change the colours to greater than 256 without the computer freezing. If you can, problem solved. If you can’t, then repeat the previous procedure again and move the slider down another notch. Keep repeating this procedure until the problem is solved. The general consensus I have found, among similar problems posted on the internet, is that this should solve your problem. However, if you get all the way down on the slider to ‘None’ and the problem persists, move the slider back to its original position as this is not the problem. At this point, check that the resolution of your computer is on a moderate setting. Running a computer on ‘High Colour (16-bit)’, a resolution of either 800 x 600 or 1024 X 768 is ideal. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and then open the ‘Display’ panel and click the ‘Settings’ tab. You should now be in your display settings. Look under the heading of ‘Screen area’ and if your computer is currently on 640 x 480, move the slider (if possible) so that it is at 800 x 600 or 1024 X 768 (depending on what your monitor can support). Click ‘Apply’ and once your display has re-calibrated, try changing the colours. Again, if this doesn’t work out, restore your display settings to what they were originally. Should none of these suggestions fix your problem, please contact me again.