Vista limiting desktop resolution

[Mark R]

Hey Chaps,

I've just installed my vista which arrived only slightly late (6 months).

Anyway, everything seems fine, except my dual monitor setup. I've got a 19 and a 17" Crt setup, and Vista is locking the 17" (my secondary) to 1280x1024 and won't let me increase this. I've tried changing the driver to generic pnp 22"/24" and even the same driver as the 19" but to no avail.

Does anyone know a fix for this???

Thanks

 

[xtknight]

Did you try using the video card's control panel (e.g. NVIDIA ForceWare/ATI Catalyst) to change resolutions or configure multi-monitor?

I've noticed that the maximum viewport per monitor is limited to the smallest monitor in the pair, even in XP.

DId it previously work in XP for you?

What do you exactly want?

Span mode: 19" 1600x1200 + 17" 1280x1024[1600x1200 virtual]
?

You may be able to try and tell Vista via its inf file that the 17" is 1600x1200 and it may automatically know to do 1280x1024, thus giving you the mode above.

You could also do:

Separate window station mode: 19" 1600x1200 + 17" 1280x1024

AFAIK that's called DualView for NVIDIA and it should just let you do that.

P.S. a "virtual resolution" lets you use one resolution of a monitor and allows you to scroll to a bigger viewport by using your mouse, kind of like an RTS.

 

[Mark R]

Yeah, it worked fine in XP. Used to run 1900x1440 and 1600x1200

I can still run the 19" in this resolution fine, it's just limiting the 17". It's also limited via the nVidia control panel (it's an 8800 btw).

 

[xtknight]

Oh, the max res of the 17" is 1600x1200? So basically it'd be incorrect even if you just hooked the 17" alone, or does hooking up the 17" alone allow you to do 1600x1200?

You didn't happen to have PowerStrip or other monitor INF tweakers on the XP install? Just stock?

 

[Mark R]

That's right. The 17" max res is 1600x1200. This was detected by XP without probs. No tweaking.

With Vista, I cannot get 1600x1200 - no matter what .INF I use, or what driver I select. This is the same whether it is primary, secondary or only monitor.

 

[nullpointerus]

If it's worth the trouble, I suggest trying different driver versions until you find one that works.


There seems to be some problem with Vista video drivers. nVidia and ATI's drivers have been detecting different "supported" resolutions from my monitor depending on which driver release is used. Sometimes 75Hz works fine; sometimes 75Hz is completely garbled; sometimes 75Hz just produces a blank screen. Sometimes I get a bunch of lower 16:10 resolutions; sometimes I get none.

This isn't just me. Every week there seems to be someone else with the same problem.

How can both driver teams screw this up so badly? EDID data, which is what the video card reads from the monitor to query its supported resolutions and refresh rates, is so darned simple a 10 yr. old with minimal computer programming experience could hack together a working text output for the binary data. At least, that's how the dumps look to me.

When I used Linux, I remember that XFree86 had this problem for the longest time, too. You could configure X to run one resolution lower than spec, but heaven help you if you try to select the native resolution.