Fixed 2005fpw problem /w XP SP2 and old Video Card

efliv

Junior Member
Jan 12, 2005
16
0
0
Hello everyone,

So I'm planning to upgrade my pc once I get some more money, but until then I'm running this monitor on an old Dell P3 600 with a RIVA TNT2 64 and Windows XP SP2.

After receiving my 2005fpw I was having trouble getting it to run in 1680x1050. It ran in 1280x960 (or something like that) right out of the box and looked pretty good even when stretched out. However, I wanted it running on the native resolution.

When I tried to update the monitor driver from the CD in the display settings I was getting an error that said something like "Can not find installer file for monitor. Contact your hardware vendor." I tried several different ways of installing the monitor driver and installed both the most recent NVIDIA drivers and the ones on the Dell CD, both of which prompted the same error notification halfway through the install. In short, nothing worked.

After snooping around on the web, I found out what was wrong. I believe it is an error related to Microsoft XP SP2. There should be a file in the c:\windows\system32 directory called "desk.cpl." This file is needed to update your monitor driver AND install the videocard drivers correctly. The post I found said that this file was found in a subdirectory c:\windows\system32\dll, but I did not have that directory on my machine. However, I did have a file called "desk.cpl_" in c:\windows\system32. I made a copy of it an renamed it to "desk.cpl". Once I did this I could update my monitor drivers which now read as "Dell 2005FPW (analog)" in the device manager. However, I still wasn't given the option to run at 1680x1050. So then I ran the .exe file in the NVIDIA directory on the Dell cd that came with the monitor. Once it finished installing, I was able to change the display to 1680x1050 in NVIDIA interface and it was reflected in the "settings" tab of the display properties window.

So now it's working and it looks great! The picture is much sharper and in the proper proportion and my xvids from bittorrent fill up a much larger portion of the screen now. It definitely runs the video a little slower and will cause me to upgrade my pc sooner than planned, but it is still well worth it. Obviously with the system I'm running games are currently out of the question, but I'm can't wait to get HL2 up in widescreen.

Hope this helps somebody out there.

 

Camus2

Member
Jan 7, 2005
26
0
0
Hey,
I'm glad to see that you resolved your driver issue.

I actually have a bunch of newbie questions that relate to this. Everyone talks about the odd native resolution of the 2005fpw and I'm not sure how you go about getting your system to display it. I went ahead and got one of these displays (It arrives Jan. 25) because I needed a monitor and they looked too cool to pass up, but I have a system that's pretty old and I'm not sure how I'm going to get it to utilize this monitor. The graphics card is an ATI Radeon VE (which is the same as a Radeon 7000, I think). On the ATI site this resolution is not listed in as display modes, but I was wondering if this is just something that is controlled by current drivers you install. Will I want to get a new vifeo card?
 

efliv

Junior Member
Jan 12, 2005
16
0
0
Well my computer is pretty ancient (dell p3 600 with a TNT2 64 video card) and I can run general windows apps at the native resolution of 1680x1050. Xvid and DVD playback is pretty choppy, but that may be more due to the slow processor, as my video card does not have any MPEG decoding capability that I know of.

As to your Radeon VE, I really have no reference to how good it will perform. I'm 100% confident that you will be able to run windows at 1680x1050 though. First update the monitor drivers via the instructions on the readme file on the root directory of the cd that comes with the monitor. Then update the ati drivers with the excecutable found in the ATI folder on the same CD. Or get the new ones off the web if they don't work, but I'm running the Nvidia drivers off the dell cd and it works fine. If you get the error I described above, follow the instructions I wrote previously.

From what I can tell just about any video card will run XP fine, but video and games will obviously suffer. I love this monitor and it's caused me to upgrade my whole system (which I'm in the process of doing). So if you have any opions on AGP video over PCIexpress please let me know. Can't wait to play HL2 in widescreen and run full screen high def video.

Enjoy!