What happened to my screen resolution?

I have a nvidia Geforce 7050 on the motherboard. Been using it since March. My monitor is a ViewSonic 2365 with a screen res of 1920x1080. I've had it since about October. Today I restarted the computer and it came up with a screen res of 1024x768. Tried to reset it to the correct res, and the highest one available to me is 1600x1200.
This happened about a month ago. At that time I did a system restore to eliminate the most recent Windows update and the screen res was fine after that. Well today I've "system restored" all the way back to Nov 20 and it didn't fix the problem. So I went to my own system backups and restored the computer back to the way it was on Nov 14, including removing all the programs I've installed since then. My maximum screen res still shows to be 1600x1200.
I have the newest video drivers for my video adapter. I'm using Win 7 Home Premium.
Anybody have any ideas about this?
Thanks a lot.

If you right click on the desktop & go to screen resolution, is your monitor being correctly identified?

If it is, and you click on advanced settings, and then the adapter tab, is the right amount of video memory coming up?

Tony_A wrote in post #11479956
If it is, and you click on advanced settings, and then the adapter tab, is the right amount of video memory coming up?

I can't find anything to tell me what amount it's supposed to have. The machine's documentation is a joke. I've looked at about a dozen web sites for the specs and all they show is the total memory.

Tony_A wrote in post #11479938
If you right click on the desktop & go to screen resolution, is your monitor being correctly identified?

Interesting question. For as long as I've had the monitor, it's been identified as "generic PNP monitor." That's what's showed up in the Windows Device Manager, as well as on the screen you're referring to here. Even in the monitor's driver installation software they tell you that it's supposed to be identified as "generic PNP monitor."
Okay, because I'm grasping at straws here, I uninstalled and reinstalled the monitor's software. Now, the monitor is identified differently at different places. In Device Manager, it actually shows the real name of the monitor. But in the screen resolution screen that you're talking about it is now identified as Display Device on VGA.
And the screen resolution is now correct. BUT the monitor utility application does not work now! I've used it many times and know what it's supposed to do and it does nothing. Sigh.

Well, it only took about 12 hours (minus a little time off for dinner) but it looks like it was some crap little game from Wild Tangent that was on the computer when I got it. Apparently I hadn't restarted my computer since about Thanksgiving, which is when I tried out some of those games.

This is what happened: This all started when I rebooted earlier today, and it came up with the 1600x1200 resolution. After restoring the machine back to Nov 20 and removing/reinstalling the monitor utility, the resolution was right, as I explained earlier. But that left my email, desktop, everything, all screwed up. And I didn't know what it was that had caused the problem. So I restored the machine back to present day. Screen resolution was still good. Then when I did a reboot, it was back to 1600x1200. So, BACK to Nov 20, still at 1600x1200, remove/reinstall monitor utility, res at 1920x1080 as it should be. This time, before restoring the machine back to present-day condition, I went through my backup and removed everything relating to those games because I just had a suspicion that they were involved. This time, when the machine got back to present-day, the res was still right and the monitor utility worked. Seems to be okay now.
And just for good measure, just as the screen resolution got hosed up, the battery died in my cordless mouse, making it look like that was somehow involved! Sheesh!

Glad you got it together! Jeez... I haven't even heard of Wild Tangent for years. That is something you want to clean out of the registry.

ChasP505 wrote in post #11485835
Glad you got it together! Jeez... I haven't even heard of Wild Tangent for years. That is something you want clean out of the registry.

Yeah, it is now, believe me!

Haven't been able to log on for a while, but glad you got it resolved. Do you run any anti virus software? I hate stuff like Wild tangent & sometimes it come pre-installed!

Oh, it wasn't a virus. (But yeah, I use Avast antivirus and also AdAware for malware in general.) I remembered that when we ran one of the programs, it made a big deal about changing the screen resolution and something about that raised a red flag for me. (Don't remember now what it was.) But afterward I just changed the res back and everything seemed to be fine.
But when I was doing the restoral from my backup program yesterday, I saw that it was restoring a huge, HUGE number of files from Wild Tangent and that reminded me. Once I did the second restoral without all those files, everything was fine.
Yeah, I hate that Wild Tangent stuff too. I think we must have been really bored one night!