There are a few issues that cause that but you seem to have found several of the more common causes such as screen resolution and graphics drivers. More often than not it will be one of those two things causing the problem but if you are using Vista or Windows 7 it could also be a directx issue. Those operating systems come with direct x 10 and 11 respectively and are not always backwards compatiable with older games such as Everquest. The compatibility issues with directx seems to vary by hardware configuration as much as it does by software configuration. If that is the problem it is usually a simple fix since you can download and run the dxwebsetup.exe directly from Microsoft, it can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...a-9b6652cd92a3
Running that program does not replace your directx version it merely adds more components to it.