Lost Monitor Settings (Colours & Res) and Touchpad/Mouse

I turned on my laptop this morning (a Dell Latitude CPx H series running Windows 98) and some things seemed to have suddenly changed overnight.

My display changed to 16-color, my display resolution changed to 400x600 (icons & text really big), and I lost all touch pad capability (no mouse pointers anymore -- have to navigate by keyboard only). I changed everything back to what it was via the Control Panel settings; but when I restart the laptop it reverts to these odd settings.

I don't know where to begin to troubleshoot this. Does anyone have any ideas?
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P.S. For those interested in more details: My programs seem to be working fine, and I haven't installed any new hardware or software for a while.

A couple strange things happened though -- (1) when I first turned on my laptop, it asked if I wanted to assign a password (even though I've been signing in with one for a LONG time - does it think I'm an additional user, but with the same name, who has different display settings?). (2) I can't seem to start up in safe mode (by holding CTRL while restarting). (3) The Windows 98 Troubleshooters don't work (the ones that ask a bunch of questions and then give options based on your answer -- the screen of questions appears, but subsequent screen of options is blank).