Windows 2000 in safe mode?

I'm researching this for someone else, so bear with me. He said his Dell laptop was playing an audio CD on Saturday and he had the display down. The next morning, when he opened it, all the icons were large and graphics were screwed up as well as the resolution (I thought maybe it shut down and restarted in safe mode). He reset the resolution, but the graphics are still very messed up, like images are all saved as a gif with not enough colors. Also, the task bar at the bottom is really tall (thick) even though the start button and the icons are small. I looked for a "system restore" but can't find one (I'm on XP). I restarted the PC in normal boot mode, but no change. I reinstalled the driver for the video card from the support CD that Dell supplies with the laptop. Any ideas how to reverse these symptoms? Once I get home later today, I can post a screen shot of the desktop if anyone thinks that would help.

Thanks a great deal for any assistance.
Jim

EDIT: attached a screen shot. You can see the borders of the windows are really thick, as is the task bar. Wallpaper looks like a crunched down gif, though it's hard to tell here.

Wow, no ideas? Usually lot's of responses...




Any thoughts?

Maybe it's a hardware problem. I'd say check with Dell support.

You can always try a system repair from the W2K CD. Backup stuff first just in case.

I see no one has come up with a solution, i am currently having the same problem, a customer of mine began having this problem when i added him to a new domain and transferred his settings over after i exported his pst file over, i wll be trying a few more things today and hopefully come up with a resolution, but is one has been resolved feel free to share the wealth.

I just reinstalled the operating system after backing everything up on my home pC.