Resolved Display resolution issue

I have just upgraded to Windows 7 due to my Vista machine dying and immediately I have run into a major problem with the display. The computer motherboard and on-board graphics processor is the Nvidia GF8200A. There is also a graphics accelerator card present, the Nvidia Galaxy Geforce 9500 GT. What I want is to use my VGA display with one of these. This suits my purposes perfectly. I don’t need gaming speed or resolution.

The VGA display I want to use, which worked fine with the Vista machine, is an older LCD TV with D-sub input. According to the specs, the native resolution of this TV is 1366 x 768, but I found in practice that the ideal setting was 1440 x 900.

The problem now is that Windows 7 will not allow me to set either of these resolutions. Regardless of which card I use, Windows insists that the native resolution is 1280 x 1024, which is ridiculous and only produces a blurry and grossly distorted image. Also, no resolution higher than 1280 is available.

To check the graphics, I connected a Lenovo wide-screen VGA monitor and it worked perfectly with both adapters. All resolutions including 1440 x 900 were available. But as soon as I connect the TV, I’m back to a restricted choice of lower resolutions, all of which distort the wide screen image. I tried the advanced tab but still only get the lower resolutions.

Windows 7 has a feature that allows you to set your own resolution, but when I try that I get an error message that the resolution is not supported by the display, which is clearly untrue because it works fine with Vista and even XP.

I’m not an expert and I’m not certain if this is the fault of the graphics adapters, but other cards on other systems have worked faultlessly with this TV and I’m inclined to suspect that this is yet another case of Windows "˜smart’ stupidity. Anyway, my question is how can I bypass this nonsense and force the OS to use a resolution setting which the adapters and TV are perfectly capable of and which works perfectly well with any other system? The OS, by the way, is Windows 7 Home Premium OEM, 32 bit, no SP upgrades.

Grateful thanks in advance to anyone who can help me with this.

 

What is the make and model number of the LCD TV?

 

It is probably an LG, but has been branded Dick Smith. The model number is G9442. It works fine at 1360 x 768 on my XP computer with an Nvidia Geforce FX5200 graphics card and it also worked perfectly on my Acer Aspire M3201 at 1440 x 900 until the Acer died. The Acer was running Vista and I was using the on-board graphics. Because of this, and because the Windows 7 computer works correctly with the Lenovo monitor on both adapters, I suspect the problem lies with Windows. I just want to get around the automatic sensing stuff and set the resolution manually, but it won't let me do that. Very frustrating. I'm sure if I installed this card on a machine not running Windows 7, everything would be fine, but of course I don't want to have to do that, which would involve major effort.

 

Nvidia Geforce FX5200 Specs for OS's. It isn't compatible with Win 7.

BROAD OPERATING SYSTEM SUPPORT
•Windows® XP
•Windows 2000
•Windows Me
•Windows NT® (all)
•Windows 98, Windows 95
•Linux compatible

 

G9442 DSE 42" High Definition LCD TV

 

Thanks for the link. I see that the drivers installed on my Win 7 are 5 years old. I will try this as soon as I can and report back. I have to get someone to download it for me because my slow connection cannot cope with 175 mb.

 

I have been away from this thread longer than I intended and I apologise to those who have been trying to help me with this issue.

I have now upgraded the Geforce driver as suggested but it didn’t make much difference. A few functions are slightly altered but I still can’t correctly set my TV monitor under Windows 7. I have tried every combination of settings I can think of with both the on-board GF8200 graphics and the Geforce 9500 card but nothing works. Windows continues to insist that the correct resolution should be 1280 x 1024, which causes the display to stretch unnaturally on my wide screen monitor. The actual native resolution of the monitor is 1366 x 768, which is not available, also not on the list under the advanced tab.

One thing that does work better is the ability to create custom resolutions. I have tried many, including 1366 x 768, but all of them display incorrectly on the monitor. Some are blurry but most are either distorted or simply don’t fit the screen area. I have tried the scaling function but in most cases it doesn’t seem to do anything. I did manage to scale one wide screen resolution to actually fit the screen area correctly. I believe it was 1440 x 900. However, the image was blurry and uncomfortable to look at. Yet 1440 x 900 worked perfectly with my Vista computer. Other custom resolutions, such as 1366 x 768 are in sharp focus, as are many 4:3 resolutions, but none fit the screen area and they cannot be scaled.

As an experiment, I put my old Vista drive in the computer and booted that. Although doing this caused problems with the on-board audio and some other devices since Vista had not been properly installed on this computer, the monitor did work perfectly at the correct native resolution. The aspect ratio was also as it should be and the image was sharp.

Clearly the graphics hardware is capable of producing a correct image on this monitor. What I don’t understand is why a supposedly advanced OS like Windows 7 has such a hard time doing such a simple thing in a correct manner. I just want to use this TV as a standard VGA monitor. It works with XP. It works with Vista. It works with Vista on this computer’s hardware. So who why can’t I get it to work with Win 7?

Anyway, that’s the story up to now. All very frustrating and discouraging. I’m not sure what to try next but I am continuing to look for solutions.

 

It sounds like you have the suitable driver in your Vista Hard Drive. Could you copy that driver and install in compatibility mode in your W7 HD? Neil.

 

TV is correctly set. It works fine on other computers. Here is another update:

After my last post I did some more experimenting and now I am completely confused. In addition to the TV that I am trying to get to work, I also have a smaller Lenovo wide screen monitor that I have been temporarily using. I connected this through a VGA adaptor to one of the two DVI ports on the graphics card. The monitor is correctly recognised by windows and I can set it to any resolution I want.

After setting the monitor I connected the TV to the other port and then used Windows to set up a multiple display. I then cloned the TV to the monitor display. For the first time, the TV worked correctly, with the right resolution and aspect ratio. However, everything went back to how it was before when I rebooted. When I tried to manually reset the resolution, Windows said I couldn’t do it. Since that one time I have not been able to get the TV to work again. I don’t know what made it work that one time or why I can’t get it to do the same again.

This is really maddening. Clearly, the TV can work as the display device and the graphics card can correctly drive it. One thing that really doesn’t help is all the "˜smart’ **** that keeps changing the available options. It is so confusing when different buttons keep appearing and disappearing. It is really difficult to pinpoint what is going on and to eliminate variables that are not relevant.

I am now wondering about making a modified inf file to override the incorrect assumptions Windows is making. I have found a brilliant utility called Monitor Asset Manager at EnTech Taiwan that can display the monitor information Windows is seeing and create an edited inf from that. Does anyone know anything more about this?

 

It works!

This is about the most frustrating situation I have ever had to deal with, even by Windows standards.

I’m not entirely sure why it works, because nothing I have encountered with this issue seems to make any sense. But here is my solution for any other unfortunate who gets caught up in this monumental Nvidia/Windows stupidity.

Having worked my way through all the straightforward possibilities without any success, I spent days researching EDID data and playing with two outstanding free tools, EDID Manager (http://www.extron.co.nz/product/software.aspx?id=edidmanager) and Monitor Asset Manager (http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm). Using these tools I was able to compare the EDID data from my Lenovo monitor, which works correctly, with that of the TV, which doesn’t. After carefully studying this, I decided to try modifying some registry data, since Microsoft says that takes precedence over anything else.

In all-too characteristic fashion, Windows 7 does everything it can to also make that previously straightforward activity as difficult and frustrating as possible. The display data at HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\DISPLAY cannot be accessed and permissions cannot be changed. The only way to get at it is to download PSTools from Sysinternals and run PSExec to override the security. Windows 7 seems dedicated to the proposition of making life as difficult as possible for anyone who needs to change a standard setting.

Once I was able to modify the registry data, I inserted two hex words (95 00) into the binary data to add 1400 x 900 to the available resolutions. I used this because it was in the EDID Manager data for the Lenovo monitor and it is the resolution that previously worked with Vista.

Initially this change did not work with the on-board GF8200 graphics, which I tried first, but I had read somewhere that the 8200 did not support Win 7 so I switched to the Geforce 9500 card and rebooted and suddenly, for the first time ever, the display was sharp and the aspect ratio correct. Yay.

Interestingly, the resolution I am getting is 1360 x 768, which is very close to the native resolution of 1366 x 768. 1440 x 900 does not show up on the list at all, but for some reason adding that to the data has made Windows finally realise that 1360 x 768 is okay. This is certainly close enough and I am a very happy camper but I don’t really know why it works. Maybe the last resolution in the list is seen as the maximum. Before I made the addition that would have been far below the monitor’s actual resolution.

Anyway, I am marking this as resolved and as far as I am concerned this thread is finally closed.