While I was displaying video on my television from my Power Macintosh 8500, I selected a resolution that caused the menu and control strip to disappear. Now I cannot access any of the settings to change the resolution. How can I restore the resolution? Follow these steps to restore the resolution.

Step 1

Shut down the computer. If you cannot see the menu bar, press the Power key on the keyboard. A dialog box will appear with the default option of Shut Down. To respond to it, press the Return key.

Step 2

Restart the computer, and reset the parameter RAM (PRAM). To restart PRAM, hold down the Command-Option-P-R keys simultaneously.

Step 3

Disable extensions by holding down the Shift key until you see the message, "Welcome to Macintosh Extensions Off".

Step 4

Delete the Display Preferences file, which is located in the Preferences folder inside the System Folder. Deleting this file will set the resolution to its default setting of 512x384.

Step 5

Restart the computer.

Step 6

You should now be able to access the menu bar and control strip to change the computer display's resolution.

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