Setting the color depth of your display in Windows

To set your colors to 16-bit, you need to open the Display Properties dialog. Go to the Start menu and select Control Panel:

Now open the one called "Display", which probably looks like this:

The display properties dialog will appear. Choose the "Settings" tab, and go down to the "Colors" box. From the drop-down menu, choose "16-bit" color, which may be labeled 65,336 colors on some older computers. DO NOT choose "16 colors", be sure to choose "16-bit" color. Choosing a higher number of colors (24 or 32-bit) is also OK.

Be sure to choose 16-bit color, not "16 colors". 16 colors is 65,320 colors less than 16-bit color!

Click "Apply" and the computer will change your display to the proper color depth. Some older computers may have to restart in order for the settings to take effect. Leaving your computer in 16-bit color mode is probably a good idea, because it's much prettier than 256 colors and should not affect performance on most graphics cards.