- May 19, 2011
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I encountered a bit of a bizarre issue today, a Surface Pro 4 with a mini DisplayPort socket vs two HDMI TVs (one at a time). It was able to detect the display without any prodding, it could detect the resolution the TVs were capable of, but no signal getting through to the TV. I tried two HDMI cables, no difference. I also tried rolling back the display driver. No amount of switching between various dual monitor modes made the slightest difference. I also tried matching the resolutions but Windows seemed to be doing that most of the time itself.
The elephant in the room was the use of a Mini-DP to VGA/HDMI/DVI adapter (there were two of these but the other didn't work at all, it used to work), without which we didn't have the means to connect the laptop to the TV. Using the adapter to connect to a VGA monitor resulted in Windows saying that it could see the correct brand monitor but it wasn't "active" (despite the monitor auto-detecting a signal as one might expect and immediately working when plugged into another laptop via normal VGA).
The graphics is Intel Iris (Plus I think, maybe Pro) 640. CPU: i7-6650U. Win10 1803 64-bit. There's a slightly newer Intel driver available but it refused to install on the Surface Pro 4 citing manufacturer differences. MS is thoroughly unhelpful by providing one binary that contains all Surface Pro 4 drivers with no indication of which version driver would be installed if I was stupid enough to try updating all drivers at once.
I found a cheap enough Mini-DP to HDMI cable for about the same price as a normal HDMI cable and I suspect this is the solution to the problem, I'm just worried that something else might be going on like the enactment of some new display content protection policy causing unexpected side-effects.
The elephant in the room was the use of a Mini-DP to VGA/HDMI/DVI adapter (there were two of these but the other didn't work at all, it used to work), without which we didn't have the means to connect the laptop to the TV. Using the adapter to connect to a VGA monitor resulted in Windows saying that it could see the correct brand monitor but it wasn't "active" (despite the monitor auto-detecting a signal as one might expect and immediately working when plugged into another laptop via normal VGA).
The graphics is Intel Iris (Plus I think, maybe Pro) 640. CPU: i7-6650U. Win10 1803 64-bit. There's a slightly newer Intel driver available but it refused to install on the Surface Pro 4 citing manufacturer differences. MS is thoroughly unhelpful by providing one binary that contains all Surface Pro 4 drivers with no indication of which version driver would be installed if I was stupid enough to try updating all drivers at once.
I found a cheap enough Mini-DP to HDMI cable for about the same price as a normal HDMI cable and I suspect this is the solution to the problem, I'm just worried that something else might be going on like the enactment of some new display content protection policy causing unexpected side-effects.
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