Question about Graphics

Hello, I've just reinstalled Windows XP Home Edition on a new hard drive that I bought today. However, after the reinstall, the graphics on the monitor were extra large and are stuck at 600x480 pixels and 16 bit color. In the display properties window, I can not change the dimensions of the monitor nor the graphic options. However when I try to change the dimension in the advanced menu, so that the dimensions are at 1240x800, the colors are all distorted and the colors are at 256-bit but are still distorted. Is this a problem with my graphics card? Because I didn't have this problem before. I just installed the hard drive and did not mess with anything in the BIOS. The hard drive was installed and I booted from a CD included with the Hard Drive which helped me set up a partition for Windows XP. I then proceeded to install windows XP Home edition from a seperate disk. And then when I tried to change the Display options, it led me to the problem I had posted in the beginning. EDIT: The video adapter is listed as unknown, is there a way to fix this? Could this be the root of the problem? Thanks in advance.

Do you know what kind of video card you have..? i.e. nVidia ..Ati…etc.. You need to get the drivers for the video card and you can do that at the manufacturers website. If you need to have it up and running before you can get online, then if you have integrated video (on-board video, the plug is normally right by the keyboard and mouse ps/2 connections) plug your monitor in to that and run it off the motherboard until you get the drivers for your video card installed. Alternatively, you can also go into your bios and make sure that your video settings are set to the type of card you have installed…i.e. AGP…PCIe…etc.. Anytime you change hardware.. of any type… for any reason… you should reset the bios.