My screen seems to go wonky when I launch Portal. Is this bad?

Alright, so I just launched the Steam version of Portal for the first time on this computer… Windows 7, 2 gigs RAM, insignificant or nonexistent video card. When it launched, the… screen resolution (Not sure if that’s right terminology) went all wacky on me. When I opened task manager to close portal, for example, the image was magnified to may times the normal size and the icons were all huge. It went back to normal when I quit. Is this bad? Also, is there any danger of it getting stuck like that one day? Normally I wouldn’t care so much as it’s probably an easy fix, but the computer belongs to my parents so I don’t want to break it…