FYI: Using a CRT

[Bodine Grunch]

Not everybody will need to know this but as I spent a great deal of time making it work for me, I thought I'd share. Two annoying problems are solved leaving one to go. I run LB on a legacy system with an S-Video connection to a CRT TV. Everything works very well until the Wizards at Redmond butt in without asking.

Problem 1 - "Your system is running out of memory (RAM)" & screen freezing error. Installing the correct video drivers (even if they claim to be Win10) will not keep Microsoft from replacing them (without notice) to the intentionally sub-standard Microsoft Basic Video driver. You will think that the new driver is faulty until you notice the MS change to the "best driver for your system". This occurred repeatedly until I was able to find a driver that "stuck". When Microsoft left me alone, my error messages and subsequent crashes stopped. 

Problem 2 - I didn't realize what a problem I had until I changed the monitor settings. After fooling with the Microsoft Basic Video driver for too long, I decided to check the Monitor drivers. Since I'm using a CRT TV I thought I was locked into using the MS chosen default Generic Non-PnP Monitor setting. I remembered that older versions of windows included a Generic Television monitor driver. I doubted that it would still be available in Win10 but it is. All I had to do was start the Device Manager, rt-click "Monitors", rt-click the "Generic Non-PnP", choose "Update Driver", click "Browse my computer...Let me pick from a list...", uncheck "Show compatible hardware" and scroll down the list to "Generic Television". There was improvement on the desktop but I didn't notice a dramatic the change until I started LB. All of the text is MUCH more clear and easy to read. I didn't realize how bad it was until I saw how good it could be.

Problem 3 - remains unsolved but I suspect it may turn out to be a driver problem as well. I can change themes in LB & BB and though the they say the theme is changed, results on the screen show at the default settings. I can reassign colors but that's about all. This is not a problem that I can't live with but it sure would be nice to find a solution using the existing hardware setup.

The thing to keep in mind when working on any legacy system is that Microsoft will not tell you when they decide to "fix" your Win10. When trouble arises, it will save time and headaches to start troubleshooting by looking (repeatedly) for unannounced changes to your hardware drivers. After all, as far as Microsoft is concerned, it's their machine not yours and it no long uses an operating system. It's just a gateway to the "operating service" they provide and change at will. You can bet the farm that there will eventually be a recurring bill charged for their service.