monitor max resolution error

[julieum]

i have a 14 inch alienware and when i bought it the max resolution was 1920x1080. one day i decided to play a game on my tv and i duplicated the displays after hooking the hdmi cable to my tv. when i unplugged the hdmi cable i went into the graphics properties to remove the second monitor and my max resolution had changed to 1368x768. the option of 1920x1080 isnt even there anymore. i rebooted the computer, tried updating the drivers and nothing works. there is even an error message on my computer saying the resolution is too low but the 'new' max resolution of 1368x768 is all that i am allowed to choose, unless i go lower.
i've searched a ton of forums and i haven't seen a similar problem. tigerdirect tech support called it a software issue and said they don't cover that.
any ideas?
thanks in advance

 

[KingFatty]

Unplugging the HDMI cable should have removed the 2nd monitor for you, but was it still there?

Also, have you tried using the Nvidia control panel, and then also try the windows desktop properties/resolution control panel?

Finally, I'd suggest launching the windows device manager, and delete your monitors, then reboot. If that doesn't work, then delete the monitors and also the display adapters, and reboot.

If that doesn't work, reboot into safe mode, and then go into device manager, and delete the monitors and displays, and reboot into normal mode.

When doing these steps, no cables should be connected. It's just the laptop, nothing else connected to it.

 

[julieum]

Thanks. The second monitor wasn't there after I unplugged but I went in to check (bc my older dell hangs onto them after they're unplugged) and that's when I noticed the error.
I did try both the nvidia and windows control panels. I also went into the device manager and disabled the monitors and display adapters before updating the drivers - could it give a different result to completely delete them?
I will give it a try
Thanks again

 

[KingFatty]

Yeah my thinking is along the lines of completely deleting all of them (monitors and displays) from device manager, so that your computer is forced to reinstall them.

My very old laptop has an Nvidia GPU and sometimes does this very weird thing like you, where the display is limited to unecessarily low resolutions and cannot even see or list the actual resolution (1080p in my situation). So, I just try various things. I think this issue is far more likely to happen when the VGA cable comes partly out, but it could just be a coincidence in my case. Your situation is different, but same frustration about the missing full resolution thing.

Note: this never used to happened to me on earlier NVidia drivers, so maybe it's just a bug with the more recent drivers?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Wait a minute!

On the NVidia Control Panel->Change_Resolution [whatever the precise wording], there is a button or link to expose resolutions not shown in the drop-down list. Look for the 1920x1080 item and check it, then click "Apply."

I'm wondering if the default setting for the game was the lower resolution you cited, and if that somehow changed your default setting on the other monitor. I hope this offers "something" toward fixing your problem, but I'm pretty sure that you should explore the above possibility.

I have a multi-monitor, multi-resolution setup, and the possibility of using two different display adapters: my 780 GTX dGPU, and the i7-2600K's HD-3000 iGPU. All of these things work together, but it becomes more complicated to assure that some game launched from the primary Windows (desktop) monitor will run on the monitor you want. So I need to find out how to make that happen. There is an overlap between your dilemma and my objectives.

 

[tweakboy]

I thionk its a no go. But good effort none the less.

 

[julieum]

hi guys!
thanks for the tips
I deleted the monitor and display adaptors and also the drivers, then downloaded the drivers again. the error message about low resolution disappeared! so that is good. Unfortunately, my resolution still shows 1366x768 as the max. i called dell support instead of tigerdirect and the guy there told me that 1366x768 is the native resolution for this monitor. Strange, because when I got it, it totally said 1920x1080
I also checked in the Nvidia control panel for the link/button suggested by BonzaiDuck but I couldnt find any such link or button.
Looks like i may be out of luck.
I do appreciate everyones suggestions