Windows Tips / Manually setting your screensaver and video resolution
The windows 95 screen saver is set in the System.ini file in the [boot] section. The setting is:
scrnsave.exe=C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\3DMAZE~1.SCR
where "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\3DMAZE~1.SCR" is the path to and filename of the screensaver file which has been selected.
The setting is affected when the user changes the settings in the Properties dialog of the display applet of control panel. It can also be edited manually with any text editor, or the windows system files editor. System Files Editor can be found in the c:\Windows\System folder and it's filename is sysedit.exe.
To use the System Files Editor, select Run from the Windows Start menu and type in sysedit, this will bring it up, then you will be able to select the System.ini file and edit it.
You can also manually set your video resolution by using regedit.exe to edit the registry directly to set the value. Once again, click the Start menu, then select Run and type in regedit, then hit Enter to start the Registry Editor. Open the registry key shown in the picture below, which is the HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\Display\Settings folder in the registry. The resolution setting may be modified by right clicking the word resolution and selecting Modify from the pop up menu. You may also have to change the RefreshRate setting to a value appropriate to the resolution you are setting as well.
Make sure you know what you are doing, as you can set your resolution to values that won't work with your monitor, and render the screen unreadable. Make sure your monitor will run with the settings you use. After you make the changes you will need to reboot for them to take affect.
To be on the safe side, first export the key values you are going to change to a .reg file, which you can use later to restore the settings to their former values in case of a problem. To restore former settings, simply double click on the .reg file you previously exported via the Regedit menu. If your selected screen resolution broke the ability to use the GUI, boot to a command prompt, and use the command "regedit c:\pathname\yourregfile.reg" on the command line to restore the previously working settings. Replace c:\pathname\yourregfile.reg with the actual drive, path, and file name you saved the .reg file under. Now just type "win" on the command line to start Windows, and see the changes.
