JVRudnick said:
Hey all...
got my sons old computer, a DELL XPS GEN5, running XPPro/SP2. Runs fine, but
the monitor I'm using is a DELL 2001FP 20" monitor and the display "stutters"
when I scroll or move items on the desktop. Went to dell.ca and got the
proper drivers for that monitor - but the directions to install same have me
stymied.
It says for me to open up the Control Panel > Display > Settings > Advanced
button IS there, but it's grayed out..and I can't click it to install.
Then I tried the New Hardware method, and while I can identify the new
drivers location, it says that this file (2001FP.INF) is not the right
file...yet that's what the DELL installer says is correct for this monitor.
Oh and a quick look at the Display item in the System > Device Manager shows
that the box is currently running a driver named VGA-VGA ??? The card is
supposed to be -- 256MB PCI Expressâ„¢ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeonâ„¢ X850 XT
PE
Could someone point out here what I've done wrong? How can I install the
correct drivers?
Jim
OK, to clarify a bit of terminology.
A "monitor driver" is usually a small ZIP file you download from the monitor maker.
It consists of an INF file (which has the device ID inside it, and also a
registry entry it will want to add, if the device ID matches the monitor). It
also has an ICM file, which has something to do with color management. Most
users looking for a monitor driver, are usually more interested in the INF
part of the thing.
http://ftp.us.dell.com/monitors/R68954.EXE (Dell 2001FP monitor driver)
(Safe to execute, just unzips)
(Open INF with notepad for a look)
A "video card driver" is a huge package, which enables accelerated hardware
operation of the video card. It will cure slow operation of your display.
Without it, a default video driver is used, which uses the video card
just as a frame buffer, but without acceleration features. The
video card driver in this case, could be downloaded from ati.amd.com
or from Dell, assuming they've hosted a video driver on their site
for the XPS GEN5. (I'd need a more accurate model number for the
Dell, to post a possible link for the driver from the Dell site.)
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html
A "monitor driver" is a crutch used by users, when they cannot set the
video card to the maximum resolution the monitor supports. Normally,
the monitor communicates via a serial bus in the monitor cable. The
computer can ask the monitor for resolution information, via DDC.
The fetched block of data is called the EDID. The max resolution
is listed in there. If the computer cannot get that information,
the display control panel may have lower "safe" resolutions listed.
One workaround, is to install the "monitor driver", and when the
registry setting inside the INF gets installed, the display
control panel will then have an identity string for the
monitor "Dell 2001FP" and it should show a resolution option
which matches the max res the monitor supports.
To see the EDID from your monitor, use this program. If you see
an info dump, like the example on this web page, then your EDID
is working. But this isn't your problem anyway. I'm only
mentioning this, in case you're curious later.
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/files/moninfo.exe (utility to download)
This is the download page for ATI Radeon for WinXP.
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=xp/radeonx-xp
There are two options. Catalyst Suite includes CCC (Catalyst Control
Center), which gives advanced Display Control Panel features. If you
just installed the smaller "Display Driver" package, that would
likely solve your problem, but without the ability to do some
things to the setup of the video card. I believe I've run my
computer without CCC before, and I think I was still able to
use higher resolutions via the default Windows display panel.
You can go into the "Add/Remove" thing for programs (a control panel),
and check to see if the ATI software is already installed.
For example, I have a couple entries in my Add/Remove:
ATI Catalyst Control Center 66.5MB
ATI Display Driver (no size listed)
I think what that means, is I installed the larger of the two
packages, and if I wanted to uninstall it, probably uninstalling
the whole thing would be the best option.
In Device Manager, under "Display Adapters", I have two entries
for the two channels of my video card. If I right click on
one of my "Radeon 9800 Pro" entries, and then check the
driver section, this is what it lists.
ati2cqag.dll
ati2dvag.dll
ati2edxx.dll
ati2evxx.dll
ati2evxx.exe
ati2mdxx.exe
ati3duag.dll
ATIDDC.DLL
ATIDEMGR.dll
.... and the list goes on.
If you had none of that, then you'd probably want to install one
of the ATI packages.
Now, another element of your install, would be chipset drivers for
the motherboard. If you look in Device Manager, under "System Devices",
you'll likely see some things with unique identities.
"Intel 82801 PCI Bridge"
The chipset drivers, when installed, take the anonymous system hardware
and give them names. If there are a bunch of named things in the System
Devices list, then you'd have some idea that chipset drivers were
already installed.
When you install the CCC whole package, one dependency the package
has, is it uses .NET library to support CCC. If .NET wasn't already
installed, the ATI installer has a copy and will install it. So
you shouldn't have anything to worry about there.
Your OS probably already has a copy of the DirectX package. If you go
to Start:Run and type in "dxdiag" without the quotes, and run it,
then it would tell you which version of DirectX it is using.
(It will take about 30 seconds for the dxdiag program to start.)
Again, the ATI installer package has a dependency on DirectX, and
if the version is not recent enough, the ATI installer will install
DirectX for you. If you want the absolutely latest version of DirectX
for the computer, you can probably find it here.
http://www.microsoft.com/directx (designed for maximum confusion)
(just use what ATI gives you for now...)
In terms of install order, if you were starting with an old OS
installer disk, these are things you might install along the way,
in an attempt to get a fully functional video card and display
system.
Install the OS. Install SP2 service pack.
Install chipset drivers (see named System Devices in Device Manager)
Install .NET library/package (probably available from MS site as a download
Needing this is specific to ATI.)
Install DirectX 9c if this is WinXP
Install ATI CCC whole package 38.3MB (it will do the previous two
steps for you, if you forgot, or at least install a minimum
version of those packages, that it needs for its operation)
After some number of reboots, you might now be seeing a red ATI
icon near the bottom of the screen. Clicking on that, or going to
Control Panels, and using the Display Control panel, should
eventually lead you to the Catalyst Control Center panel.
In there, you can bump up the display resolution, to the
native resolution of the monitor (like 1600x1200 at 60Hz or whatever).
And do a whole bunch of other stuff.
It should do the right things by default, and after installing
it, the "stuttering" should be gone.
Sorry for the length of this, but I wanted to cover some of
the background issues.
If you wanted more help, include the Dell model number, as that
will make it possible to trace down more stuff on the Dell site.
Paul
