I changed monitors. Went to display settings and saw I only had 16 colors as my only choice. Went back to my original monitor, same thing. Upgraded service pack, downloaded new video drivers and still can not get more colrs. Any suggestions?

What video card and resolution are you running at?

What version of windows do you use? Usually when this happens u'll have to reinstall windows....

Using windows nt 4.0. S3 Virge/DX video card. Only have 640 x 480 ans 800 x 600 resolutions. Reinstalled drivers for card also.

Did you try with another pci video card? This happens to my friend as well. He's using windows2000 with ati 8500, and for some reason windows refused to switch to 16 or 32 bit color, it just stay at 256 colors......i've try to uninstall and reinstall all drivers (and install the apporpriate windows updates) that i can and still it's the same. So i think you'll simply have to reinstall windows...

P.S. because he's too lazy to format he still uses 256 to play game and watch movie...

i WISH i HAD THE CHOICE OF 256 COLORS. My only choice is 16.

Did you check microsoft KB base @ http://support.microsoft.com? That site contain a lot of information that u might find useful...

Sometimes (for whatever reason) Windows will only list a limited set of colours for you to choose even though your GFX Card/drivers/monitor etc maybe able to display many more. Happened to me when I installed DX 2 on an ol Win95 PC.

Try the following (I'll assume you have the lastest SP and drivers installed for the GFX card OS & monitor):

On the settings tab of the display properties dialog choose 'List all modes' button. Choose the mode that you want, click 'test' and if all is well 'ok'.

If that doesn't work then (start->run->regedit) HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\...

You should then see 2 subkeys here: VGASave (the system default vga driver) and another relating to your GFX card (on my system this is called promnt), if your not sure look in your '\System32\Drivers' folder as the subkey shares the same name as your GFX card driver.

Now highlight the key that corrisponds to your video driver and then the Device0 subkey now edit the following DWORD value in the right hand pane:

'DefaultSettings.BitsPerPixel' change this to a decimal value of 8 for 256 colours or 16 for 16bit 'High Colour' and so on.

You can also set your screen resolution and refresh rate here, the DWORD values should be pretty self explanatory.

Hope this helps somewhat

Video Card Drivers are are a great place to start but not the only limitation. If the monitor drivers are Standard VGA, the operating system will limit you to16 bolors. Make sure the monitor is listed as Plug and Play Monitor or better yet by appropriate Mkae and Model for best results.

Since you stated that changing monitors started the whole issue I'd be willing to bet you need to properly identify your monitor to your operating system.