I working on an old e machine, I am sorry that I don't have specifics, except that it has an ati rage pro turbo 2x agp card. The guy's computer that I am working on says he woke up One day and his dispay was set to 16 bits, First thing I did was just apply 256 color, restart but it does not change, so now I am in the process of updating sriver for this card, is there anything else I can check if this does not work, I will be over at his house later and will check back for any reponses you might have , thanks

16 bits (high color) is more quality than 256 colors. Why is he complaining? The succession list going from least to most is like this:

monochrome
one other I don't remember
256 colors
High color 16bit
True color 32 bit

I assume his OLD PC cannot handle 16 bit colour?

I had a similar problem where a [updated generic Windows] driver would not record configuration changes to the registry, so they were back where they started at every reboot.

I went back to the Oroginal Equipment Manufacturers' drivers and that fixed it.
In fact those original drivers offered better configuration choices AND THEY WORKED TOO.

The one I couldn't recall was 16 colors, and I assume that's what was meant.

Agreed, go with original drivers if the newer ones won't hold. Does Device Manager have a yellow exclamation point "!"

This problem [and ALL software problems] would be so easy to fix if you had a [recent] backup of the C: partition taken when the software worked just as you liked.
[The hardware must not have changed since the backup was made.]
Then you'd simply re-format the C: drive and restore that backup.
The good driver [and everything else that worked so well] would be back in place with certainty, in very little time with relatively little effort.
Since you use the same process to fix [almost?] all software problems you'd become familiar with it and good at it, making no errors in procedure.
It's good if the method you use to re-format & re-store can be done even when the OS won't boot.
I use "Simple Backup", Disaster Recovery Floppy Diskettes, and backups on CD-RW disks. It works a treat.

I am using DriveImage, it works great too. (thanks, Paul Komski)
It is just planning a backup strategy before the disaster instead of trying to only recover after...that is the change that is needed. Even for little annoyances like display settings!

I am starting to experiment with backups to network drives with the software too, no CDs to burn and always having a current backup available seems ideal.