monitor compatibility issue with XP?

I’m mystified with a hardware problem that has refused to go away. At least I’ve narrowed it down to the monitor, but I’m at a loss to understand what’s going on.

Friend’s machine with a 1 GHz AMD Athlon, 256 mb 2100 DDR ram, 8 gig HDD, Windows XP Pro, [See previous post , we got past the download issue] The machine didn’t appear to be loading video drivers because once XP loaded, the screen went black and silently buzzed with dancing multicolored horizontal lines. However, during POST, the screen displayed the usual (DOS) boot functions that we’re all used to seeing.

Since I could see XP in safe mode, I decided to download a video driver from the internet with my own machine, burn it, and install the driver on the other machine in safe mode. so I brought the machine home, but when I plugged it in and turned it on, it blew up. literally. a poof of flame shot out the back, sparks and a horrible lingering odor to remind you of the shock of it all. Power supply was shot, the hard drive refused to spin in another machine, so I went out and got another machine to replace it. Who knows about the mobo or memory...

This time, I’m running a brand new AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.7 GHz), 256 mb 2100 DDR ram, 40 gig HDD, Windows XP Pro. Set it all up at home, and took it over there today to set up her broadband, and when I turned it on, same black screen with dancing lines as soon as XP loaded. Still can see the DOS-looking boot functions, but you lose everything when XP loads.

Now what’s weird is that at home, where I set it up, I had the machine on an old CRT and it worked great. Then I moved it over to my flat panel LCD "“ so I could plug up to my broadband hookups and download & install Windows updates. Worked great. The monitor she has at home is an old Packard Bell, appears to be healthy (colors not washing purple or anything), has the speakers on the side (one is missing).

So it has to be her monitor. In fact, it probably was her monitor on the old machine too, before I brought it home and destroyed it. my question is, is it possible for a piece of hardware, a simple monitor, to be incompatible with XP? No question anymore about video drivers, the new machine worked great with its own video drivers on two other monitors here at home. Her monitor seems fine in VGA, but not SVGA. Could it possibly be that proprietary thing that Packard Bell had such a bad reputation for a while back? Any explanations, thoughts?

P.S. I thought I might try bringing her monitor home and plugging it up with some older OSes, to see if it works with them. Would be interesting to see what happens then. First, I have to get over the fear of her stuff blowing up in my face though.

Sorry about the length here, but I just had to post this to warn people about certain hardware issues that seem to happen with XP. I did not have her monitor hooked up when I installed XP on the new machine - perhaps the compatibility scan might have pointed it out.

 

I am using an old Packard Bell monitor as a 14" TV.

But it will not handle anything higher than 640x480 and 256 colors.

Anything higher and I get the same results as you refer to.

I also had the machine setup originally on a newer Monitor and forgot to change the machine resolution back before I put it on the PB Monitor.

Answer YES. Due to XP maybe wanting to set a higher resolution.

MY PB Monitor will not handle XP either.

BillyBob

 

Thks BB, makes me feel better... Like I'm in good company, if it happened to you too!

I guess not all monitors are PnP. Cheers -

- maureen

 

Misery loves company - just sold a new Athlon machine to an individual and dropped it off at his business after a couple of other calls. I'm driving back home and get a call on my cell phone - he took the machine home and set it up and - nothing! OK, I'm a half an hour away now - turn around and head over to his house. While driving, the only thing I can think of is perhaps its the USB mouse and keyboard I included with the package. Now, he's an electrician by trade so I'm not even questioning whether or not its plugged in.

When I get there - the monitor he's using has to be circa: 1943 - this is one antique. Sure enough - no boot- nonothin' - I unplug the monitor, fire the machine up and presto - power led lights up, hdd led lights up, fans ars spinning, keyboard numlock and caps lock work - everything looks good, just no monitor attached. I ask him about another monitor and he brings out another antique - same behavior.

Upon examination, neither monitor cable had a full pinout and I doubt that they were even CGA monitors, let alone VGA or SVGA. My offer - free monitor if he wants to follow me - he accepts and gets a free 15" shop monitor, then buys a new 17" from me at cost. He goes home and all is well.

I guess I'm lucky - no smoked MB, PS or HDD - just no post until a decent monitor was on there.

 

laughing rock-- loved story.
can relate.

 

Old monitors are definitely not plug and play. I have an old Packard Bell monitor and I cannot even use it to install Windows 98. Whatever defaults Windows uses for refresh rates are not compatible with the monitor and I get "lunacy" on the screen when Windows first boots. Time to go on a run to the local dump.

 

I know this is an old old post, but since I last posted, there have been further developments and I felt I had to set the record straight on a couple issues here, and toss in a word to the wise.

First: About the Packard Bell monitor. Someone donated an old monitor to my friend to replace the Packard Bell that wasn’t working with her machine. That old monitor too, failed to work with her XP machine. The old monitor I had, the one that I set her computer up with, worked fine with her machine. So I swapped with her and brought the Packard Bell home and plugged it into my old machine. Worked great with my old machine. And she was happy to be able to use her machine until she gets her flat panel.

Forgot all about it. Brought another person’s computer, XP Pro, over to check out a dialup problem. Plugged it up with my old machine’s peripherals, like I do with everything I bring in to work on. Booted up fine. It didn’t occur to me until the next day, that that XP Pro machine was working fine, even with the offending Packard Bell monitor plugged in!

Now the only significant difference between the two machines, the AMD XP 2000+ with XP Pro and the AMD XP 2100 with XP Pro, was the motherboard. Same 2100 ram speed, same mb of ram, same HD capacity. Both mobos were running video with shared ram. The mobo that wouldn’t work with the Packard Bell monitor or the donated older monitor, was an Amptron mobo. The XP machine that did work with the monitor was an MSI mobo. So, I am posting here to set the record straight that it is not XP which refused to work with the Packard Bell, but apparently it is the motherboard that caused the hardware incompatibility.

Second item I wanted to clarify for whomever it might help, was the previous thread where I had fried one of the above machines after plugging it in to the setup with my old machine (see link above, in the initial post).

After a second machine blew up, and my flash memory stick died in a separate incident, I could no longer hold with my theory that it was a freak accident. I kept seeing this nagging picture where I was plugging power cords into the surge suppressor backwards. Well, you can’t plug a three-prong in backwards, but the idea was correct. I called a friend who knows this stuff, and asked if it were possible that there could be a reverse polarity in the house. He not only acknowledged that it was possible, he came over and tested the circuits in the room where I did my computer work. In fact, there was a reverse polarity on every receptacle in that room. However, each of those receptacles was correctly wired, so it took some hunting to find another receptacle on that circuit that was wired backwards and causing the whole circuit to reverse. We found that receptacle in the kitchen, where the microwave was recessed into the cabinetry and plugged into the common wall. I inherited that problem when I purchased the house, I guess. I’m no longer afraid that I’m going to blow up someone else’s computer, but I still don’t understand why more than 90% of the computers I’ve worked on in that room had no problem, when those two did. I lost the hard drives, the cdroms, the memory, they were both a total loss.

So, if anyone else has to deal with a mysterious electrical problem, the lesson is: don’t just go and recommend a better surge suppressor, like I did. That only conditions the spikes and ebbs of the reversed current. Consider also the possibility of the polarity being messed up as well. don’t know how much those little testers are yet, but they seem to be worth their weight in gold if only to rule out that computer-killing possibility. just plug them into an outlet and see immediately, by the light pattern, if there is a wiring problem. Wish I had known then what I know now.

Older and wiser

- maureen

 

Wow, should be a warning with every new monitor and tower, "Check Polarity before pluging in this unit "

 

Maureen, I have to disagree with you concerning the compatibility of old monitors. Old monitors require specific refresh rates to operate correctly and these refresh rates are controlled completely by software (video drivers and the OS). No offense but I'd put some serious dough on your problem not having anything to do with your hardware.

But the problem isn't exactly the fault of Windows XP either - in actuality, no offense again, it's your fault. You need to find a monitor driver that's suitable for whatever monitor you're using. The problem is that finding such a driver can be almost impossible for old monitors. Sometimes you can get lucky and pick a monitor driver that's compatible with your monitor but that's a total crapshoot and you can end up damaging your monitor if you "feed" it the wrong refresh rate. I'd think you should be able to boot XP into Safe Mode with most any monitor and worst case, you could run the monitor as one of the generic VGA monitors. But I suppose if a monitor is REALLY old, it might not even boot into Safe Mode.

 

Geez, Chiles "“ news to me! Thanks. I went online and you’re right, there are tons of drivers out there for monitors. I’ve never had to install a driver for a monitor which is why I thought you didn’t have to -- I guess the windows *.inf file for monitors has worked for me every time (except the one time above) Seems like it always identified the monitor specifically and correctly in device manager too. I did install a monitor driver once for a flat panel, to see if it made any difference in the picture quality. It didn’t. Guess I’m just spoiled by the PnP devices.

And you’re exactly right "“ I was able to get a standard VGA driver in safe mode (16 colors I think) with that original AMD machine that had the Packard Bell monitor plugged in. XP refused to load the standard VGA safe-mode driver for itself, however. When windows loaded, the screen went black. I had gone in safe mode where I could see, and I reset the resolution to 480x640 just to try to get XP to load itself without going black. Wouldn’t hold that resolution. Never occurred to me that the problem might be a monitor driver "“ I set out immediately to find a video driver instead. Hmmm. Thanks for tipping me off on that.

Interesting, though, that XP Pro installed a great driver for the PB monitor on the one machine, and was unable to install the same driver for the same monitor on the other machine.

 

Maureen, always use the monitor driver from the monitor manufacturer even if your operating system "knows" the monitor and installs its own driver.

Good luck!