Resolved Unable to see monitor except in safe mode.

Over the past couple days, I've had windows crash and did a restore from dvd. When windows comes up, it thinks there are 2 monitors and puts everything on monitor #2, which is unavailable for viewing. I also can not access the monitor thru the control panel. I have not been able to restore the proper AMD drivers yet as the only way I can get a screen is in safe mode with networking. I also need to gain access to windows update because the version on the dvd is way old.

What can I do to have the sys default to the proper monitor and hopefully prevent this from happening again?? If I can get a view without being in safe mode, I think I can move on.

Thanx so much in advance for any help you can give.

Al (andythebeagle)

 

You're a dog type person. Gotta love it.

No on the 2nd monitor. I got to thinking last nite, actually at 6AM, that maybe Windows sees a network instead of just the monitor, and is selecting what it sees as default. Anything is possible. This is a type of history with this machine and when the AMD drivers are up and running, I've been able to say "No" to it thru the AMD Catalyst Control Center.

 

Have you tried pressing WinKey + p on the blank screen?

 

No. First time I've heard of it. I'm really not very brite. From what place should it work?? I will mess around and see what happens. Can't do any damage at this point.

 

The win key + p didn't do anything.

 

Do you have onboard graphics that you could plug the monitor into?



Sorry it didn't help, but here's a bit of info on WinKey + p. Some have used it with success when their desktop disappeared.

http://forums.pcpitstop.com/index.php?/topic/191946-windows-key-p-easy-display-switcher/​

 

From what I can tell, it's plugged into the graphics card port. I'm gonna mess with it for a long time. I'll either get it working or burn it down. Just looking back. About 40 years ago, I was involved with CDC and IBM mainframe machines. Things sure have changed. A LOT.

CDC was a solid state machine running octal. Grief.......... However, they were fast and good.

 

I should have said integrated graphics. (meaning that the motherboard has a graphics port of its own)

 

It is a separate GPU.

 

Hi Al, AMD Radeon specs for your graphics card state minimum 400W power supply required.
Your System Details show 300W PSU - you may need to up the game!
If you can get into Safe Mode - have you tried Un-installing your Graphics card and re-booting the comp to see if Windows cures it? Neil.

 

Weird. This is basically an off the shelf unit that we added additional memory and an additional 2TB drive. The most activity the card would get is watching cartoons. I'm not a gamer. Besides I thought this was a relatively small card. Maybe it's getting bored with the lack of activity??

My son just built a new machine. Tower is huge. Liquid cooled, don't yet know any specs on it but everything he does turns into magic on steroids. He's a Win 7 fan. I bring this up because maybe he has a larger p/s. I'll have to see. However, he usually swaps back and forth with my other son. Both are active gamers and more. I try not to drag him into my **** because I don't wanna listen to "I told you so ", or the laughter. They both think I'm all too old for this ****. Maybe they're right?? I'll never admit it to them.

 

It looks like his GPU came preinstalled with his system, Neil...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103422

 

Spot on. I got really tired of trying to build and got a good deal on it. Besides, it is all I needed. The most I do is edit and convert videos. That and watch Netflix and Amazon. What I did was overload it with all too much video software. Between Adobe and Powerdirector, along with stuff like AVISynth, VidCoder, HandBrake, VirtualDub and some others and by the time you get filters and all it's an entire drive full of toys. I do know that quite frequently, the CPU is maxed out. Never dawned on me to worry about the P/S

 

I'm gonna check out and see if re installing windows helps. Won't take long and I may have done something w/o thinking. It happens. Let ya know tomorrow if it helps.

 

I checked at AMD regarding the suggested power supply and my experience has been that Retail units are built to $ factor.
I can recount two HP's and one Silicon Brand with the smallest PSU's you could think of. 180W in the HP and 220w in the Silicon unit.
If you tried to increase the performance - you had to consider renewing the PSU. What made it worse, the HP PSU's were dedicated compact units and EXPENSIVE and I had to modify the cases to install Standard ATX units!
Al, you said you could get into Safe Mode with Networking. Can't you get your Driver updates that way? Neil.

 

No. Tried that. Not even as admin.

Now for some "good" news. (Gotta maintain a sense of humor) The monitor died completely and I can not tell if it is the card or the monitor. It seems that whatever is wrong, it's gonna cost me more money than I have. Keeping that in mind, I decided to put some serious time into an old machine and got it running. So, for now, the high tech stuff is out and an older tech is in. This is a Dell 6300 with XP. No more 64 bit for a while. I've been seriously spoiled. I will have questions about the Dell. I spent a day repairing some corrupted .NET files and then another day installing updates to XP. A couple updates would not install. I'm not going to worry about that right now. In a few days.

I hope I haven't worn out my welcome with this fiasco. As soon as I have some local support from my son and some cash to buy what I need, then I'll fix 'er.

Good grief, this thing is slow and clunky.

 

The news wasn't as good as I thought. I've been embarrassed before. Oddly enuf, I usually do it to myself. This time I out did myself in spades. I have had issues with this machine and it's monitor off and on for about 8 months or so. Nothing that couldn't be fixed by going into the preferences.

These past few days had me going nuts. I've had this thingy for about 1 1/2 years and it has been running, flawlessly? For the most part. It's only been in the past few weeks it started giving these weird signals that there was an issue. Mostly showing up in Flash or Silverlight and site specific. Firefox had the best ability to tough it out, but Chrome and IE just gave it up.

It really looked, to me, that Win 7 had taken a serious hit and needed to be reinstalled. There were all kinds of symptoms from loss of video to not booting correctly. The biggest problem was the user account I'd been using. It just wouldn't work correctly and appeared to be over stuffed by all the activities with the videos. I can't explain any of it, but mostly, all the issues seemed to center around videos and video sites.

Now for the embarrassing stuff. For all the time it has set here and run, 1 1/2 years, it just did not know who or what it was, or what it's job was. That is because, ready for this (?) there were 2 (TWO) video cables plugged into the monitor. No wonder it thought there were 2 monitors. It kept trying to go to the HDMI and the VGA was telling it "NO ". One was the HDMI cable, and the other was the VGA cable. With the VGA cable taken out of the picture, I now get a proper HD display. Always worked, but there was something there I couldn't identify.

My son found it and I had been all over this thing for a couple weeks. Funny thing is, It was him that set this thing up on day 1, all that time ago. Maybe this will help sort out the problem with the monitor speakers not working??

I hope everyone gets a good laugh over this. I was so stunned I couldn't even think. Now, it's funny as hell.

 

Great to see you got it sorted. You must make a note about checking cables when your screen display plays up, and keep your son away from your comp. Neil.