Please Help - NVidia FX Go5200 resolution problem

[Dan]

Hello There,

I just purchased a Dell Inspiron 5160 which has an NVidia FX Go5200
video card. I own another Inspiron 5160 and an Inspiron 5150, both
with the same video card. I am not sure how I got so lucky, but one
of the 5160's resolution settings are completely messed up. I only
have 2 options for setting resolution, 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 ...
thats it! The other two machines both have a maximum resolution of
1400 x 1050. Strangely, I can not seem to figure out whats going on
with this laptop, why can't I get the higher resolution?

I have been on the phone with Dell Technical support 4 times already,
and they are completely inept. Each time they give me something else
to try, and so far none of them work. I am very familiar with
hardware, and have already gone through all the standard steps of
trying to update my drivers, flashing my BIOS and running all windows
updates. I have tried reinstalling my video driver directly off of
the Dell site, so I assume that they keep the most up to date drivers.
I checked out NVidia's site, but when doing an update from there I
get prompted with a message similar to "The driver installed on your
system is newer than the driver you are trying to install". I tried
installing it anyway, but no change.

After all the headache of dealing with Dell, I decided that I was sick
of trying to figure out this problem, so I asked Dell to ship me a new
laptop. Just my luck, but this one has the Exact same problem. I can
not get my resolution any higher than 1024 x 768. I am going to call
dell right now, but I have little faith in their ability to solve this
so I want to try the newsgroups.

Just so you know, I have Windows XP Pro installed with all the
updates. I have updated all the drivers on my machine, including the
video driver. I have flashed my BIOS just in case. Unlike my other
laptops, there is no NVidia utility in my taskbar, nor did it ever
appear when updating my driver.

What should I do? Should I ask for another new laptop? This is
crazy. I have purchased numerous dell systems in the past, and have
never had any problems like this. Any suggestions you could provide
would be MOST helpful.

Thanks in advance
Dan

 

[Nick Kritselis [MS]]

Dan,

Can you reply to this post with a copy of the DXDiag texts from the system
that does not work, and another from one of the systems that is working.

To reply with a dxdiag text:
Click on Start -> Run and type 'dxdiag' in the run box, then click 'Ok'.
When the DirectX Diagnostic Tool window appears you will see tabs across the
top click each tab and run the diagnostic tests on each. Then click the
'Save All Information' button, which will create a text file on your system
where you specify, as in My Documents or Desktop. Open that text file, copy
the contents and paste it to a reply.