Resetting Your Screen Settings

An interesting feature of the BeOS' Screen preferences application, which allows you to set the resolution and color bit-depth of your screen, is that it allows you to set the screen refresh rate using a slider bar.

This feature permits you to tune your refresh rate to the best possible rate for your monitor. It also allows you to totally confuse your monitor, which can (in a bad case) render your screen unviewable.^*

The worse thing is, if your screen is unviewable, you can't use the on-screen controls to turn your monitor back to something you can view. How do you get out of this situation?

It turns out to be simple:

1. Hold down the Alt (or Command), Control, and Shift keys.

2. Press the F12 function key.

Your screen will reset back to the default resolution for the BeOS, 640 by 480 pixels, with a 60 Hz refresh rate.

Note that some fixed sync monitors do not support this resolution, and will go out of sync (become unviewable) when this happens. If you have a fixed sync monitor, don't use this shortcut!

^* Important Warning: You can make your monitor burst into flames (!) by setting the refresh rate too high. Read your monitor's instruction manual to determine the refresh rates supported on your monitor before you make changes to your refresh rate above 75 Hz.