New computers and monitor resolution.

[Stytooner]

Okay Guys and Gals. So I bought a Lenovo computer to replace a year old Compaq I thought was messed up. Turns out it was the HD. The Compaq came with a nice LCD monitor 19". The Lenovo didn't have one. This monitor worked fine while running under Vista, but I have since retrograded to XP SP2.
When I first got the Compaq, they had no drivers available for XP. Strictly Vista. That has since changed and I am able to download drivers for most things including the monitor. Same with the Lenovo. They have XP drivers for everything too.
Problem is, no matter how hard I try, I cannot get this driver for the monitor to load correctly. It thinks it's loaded, but it isn't. I cannot get the needed resolution. I need 1440 x 900.
All I can get are the standard Window res's.
I have installed all the new drivers for the Lenovo as well.
These res's are not correct and really screws me up when using Cad and things like that or looking at images. Some folks are heavy set, but they are obese on my monitor. My monitor adds 50 pounds.
I am unaware how to resolve my resolution issues.

I am now willing to buy an after market or add in video card if it will support the res I tell it to. I have both PCI and PCIE slots available.
I don't game, so nothing fancy needed.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.

[LCHIEN]

try going to the website for your graphics chip mfr and see if they don't have drivers that support widescreen aspect ratios. You may need to poke around and find out what manufacturer made the chip used on your card or even MB. Some systems utilities might help identify it or go to control panel>system>hardware>device manager and see whats listed for your display adapter.

Some manufactureres now have video controller applications that you run and they identify what chip sets you have and load the latest correct drivers no matter what the model or make of the card. the applications may also allow you to set video resolution directly.

Failing that, you may have to buy a new card.

[Stytooner]

Thanks a bunch, Loring.
It is an Intel Chipset and I downloaded the ID utility and after awhile I did locate the right software. It still didn't work, but I also downloaded the accelerator driver. It then told me it had a problem and could not continue because of this particular monitor.
Well when I rebooted, everything was skinny. Actually as it should be.
I now have the correct res and I no longer have any yellow exclamation points in the hardware section of the system.
I find it really hard to believe that something actually worked like it was supposed to. Thats one in a row so far. I hope to continue this streak.
Thanks again, Loring. You saved me a few bucks.

[LCHIEN]

Glad to have you running OK, and skinny friends and family. And glad I helped, what little I did.

I had a strange experience once, I got an LCD display early on, normal aspect ratio.
When I installed it it mostly ran fine, but everyonce in the while the screen would break up and the machine would fatally crash. I finally got it to stop crashing by reducing the slider in the video acceleration options page to very low or no acceleration. That worked to stop the crashing, but I never understood why... Isn't a LCD display with an analog interface basically just a write-only device? I mean, you send it dots and pixels in the right order and it displays them.

[Duff]

No help to you, but thats the same resolution my 17" iMac G5 runs. . .

GOOD LUCK!

[justaguy]

Glad to have you running OK, and skinny friends and family. And glad I helped, what little I did.

I had a strange experience once, I got an LCD display early on, normal aspect ratio.
When I installed it it mostly ran fine, but everyonce in the while the screen would break up and the machine would fatally crash. I finally got it to stop crashing by reducing the slider in the video acceleration options page to very low or no acceleration. That worked to stop the crashing, but I never understood why... Isn't a LCD display with an analog interface basically just a write-only device? I mean, you send it dots and pixels in the right order and it displays them.

The problem was with the video card. The monitor was just displaying the garbled contents of the video memory that holds the image information. IN this case it sounds like it was a timing problem.

[LCHIEN]

The problem was with the video card. The monitor was just displaying the garbled contents of the video memory that holds the image information. IN this case it sounds like it was a timing problem.

that would make sense except it worked fine with a SVGA monitor for a couple of years with that acceleration setting.

[Kristofor]

The monitor you were using shouldn't directly have any impact. However, if the new monitor was higher resolution or when it was detected if your color depth settings were increased then you would be using more of the onboard video memory and perhaps increasing the heat generation. Normally 2D windows usage is much less likely to have issues than with 3D apps/games.

Too late now, but first thing to try is updating the video card drivers and reloading/updating DirectX if you have that installed. On a tweaked machine you'd also want to make sure you were running at stock/standard clock speeds and voltages.

[Stytooner]

Thanks Guys. I did update all the drivers for this computer through Lenovo and Compaq, but until I went directly to Intel, it was no joy. This was a clean install of XP SP2 a week or two ago with just my critical software installed. I had downloaded and installed all the updates from Windows as well.
What was odd in the end is the monitor driver always thought it was installed, but in device drivers, it wasn't. I couldn't even get it to install any odd ball monitor driver. Windows was blocking all the advanced options. Yes I am the admin on this one. It was real reminiscent of Vista.
Anyway, in the end it said it couldn't install it, but it actually did and wiped out all the attention notices in the driver section. Started working right, so ultimately I still don't know exactly what fixed it, but i think getting lost had a lot to do with it.

[Bruce Cohen]

Lee,

I keep telling ya, buy a Mac and stop futzing around.

Bruce

[Stytooner]

Lee,

I keep telling ya, buy a Mac and stop futzing around.

Bruce

Yeah right, Bruce. Where's the adventure in that?

[jonmulzer]

Lee,

I keep telling ya, buy a Mac and stop futzing around.

Bruce

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iEAGmBRC1dc

[Stytooner]

Ohhhhh!!!!! Maybe there is some adventure when owning a Mac. He sure owned his.

[Scottydont]

I feel your pain Lee! Living the dream huh? I'm glad Loring got you squared away. I build gaming PC's and we are always looking for the fastest hardware and video drivers. I can say that with both XP and Vista, video drivers are the one of the most finicky causes of crashes, display issues, media center compatibility etc.

My best practice is not to be an early adopter for the latest drivers but I will watch forums on feedback on the integrity and performance of specific releases of video drivers.

Coincidentally I just had a big issue with a new video driver on XP this week. I was getting tearing and fragmentation and very low frame rates. I tried to "roll back the driver" which didn't work. I tried restoring the PC to a previous restore point and didn't work either. I had to use a specialized program called Driver Cleaner Pro to remove remnants of the old driver from the registry. It is a program I highly recommend to upgraders like me. Reinstalled a new driver last night and I am good to go. My frame rate is better too!

Upgrading of video drivers are a priority if you are watching DVD's, upgrading software, installing programs or upgrading a monitor. You might benefit in performance or video quality. However if you tend to have basic use with no upgrade habits if you find a driver that works well for you, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

[Scottydont]

Lee,

I keep telling ya, buy a Mac and stop futzing around.

Bruce

That is the direction I am leaning for daily computing. I have been shopping for a Mac Book Pro with Vista pre-installed.