Windows Server 2003: Screen Resolution Weirdness

Here's the second of two tips my manager shared with me concerning installing Windows Server 2003.

The first tip dealt with being unable to connect to the Internet.

This tip deals with screen resolution, and has a very strange workaround.

After installing WS2003, he had a problem with his screen resolution: he could only set it as far as 256 colors, and 1024 by 768 pixels. He spent a fair amount of time talking to the Help Desk, and messing with the video adapters and drivers, to no avail.

(To see what resolutions your adapter supports: On the Start menu, point to Settings and click Control Panel, and then click. the Display icon. On the Settings tab, click the Advanced button. On the Adapter tab, click List All Modes. Windows displays a list of the resolutions which the adapter you're using supports.)

Finally, here's the workaround he stumbled on:

1. On the Start menu, point to Settings and click Control Panel.

2. Double-click Regional and Language Options.

3. On the Languages tab, select the Install files for East Asian languages, and then click OK.

4. Follow the steps to install the East Asianlanguage support and reboot your system.

And that did the trick.

Someone else suggested that perhaps his adapter was too new to be included in the WS2003 distribution, so it used a generic driver which was replaced by the language upgrade. If anyone's got any other theories, I'd love to hear them.

In any case, now his screen resolution is a comfortable 32-bit color quality and 1600 by 1200 pixels.

And he can write things like 度主ありが十ございます