B
Bill Anderson
I had this long plea for help from the ATI videocards newsgroup ready to
go, and just before I hit the "send" button I had a brainstorm. So now
that I've solved what seemed at first to be a real puzzler, what do I do
with this long message I've spent so much time writing? Anybody want to
try to figure out what I was doing wrong? If so, read on, and maybe you
can file this in your memory banks in case it ever happens to you. If
you're not interested, well just move along. I have it all working fine
now.
Here's what I wrote:
I bought a new monitor today -- a 24" Samsung 245BW widescreen LCD.
Brought it home, disconnected the old 19" analog LCD, removed the
DVI/VGA converter, connected the new DVI cable to my ATI Radeon HD 2600
videocard and the monitor, fired up the computer, launched 32-bit
Windows XP Pro, set everything up, and it looks great.
But ...
I have a triple-boot system. I'm also running, just for the fun of it,
Vista 32-bit and Vista 64-bit. Vista looks pretty; I'm having fun with
it; I use XP for serious work; no harm with playing around. Trouble is,
when my installations of Vista look for the new monitor, they can't find
it. While Vista is finishing its load process, the monitor indicates
it's alternately looking for a digital signal or an analog signal, but
it finds nothing and eventually goes to sleep.
It's got to be a driver issue. The monitor performs fine all the way
through the load process -- the little green blocks move horizontally
just as they're supposed to. It's only when Vista should appear on the
screen that the monitor loses its signal. And the exact same thing
happens whether I'm trying to load 32-bit or 64-bit Vista. XP, as I've
said, works fine.
I've loaded the latest (well, latest 2007) Catalyst Control Center for
all three of my OSes -- XP 32-bit, Vista 32-bit, and Vista 64-bit. Of
course, when I loaded these versions of CCC, they saw an analog monitor
and apparently set themselves up accordingly. Now they're seeing a
digital monitor and XP can handle it but Vista can't. Or so it appears.
I can get into Vista using Safe Mode, but there's not much I can do with
CCC in Safe Mode. The icon doesn't appear in the systray, and when I
try to start CCC it tells me it can't run because no ATI video driver is
loaded, which is true, because I'm in Safe Mode.
I'm sure I'm missing something simple. Help, please. And thanks in
advance.
Motherboard
ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX
ProcessorIntel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA
775 Processor
MemoryCrucial 4GB kit (1GBx2), Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR2 PC2-8500
Video Card
SAPPHIRE 100210L Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR4 PCI Express x16
Video Capture
VisionTek TV Wonder ATI HD 650 PCI Express
Power Supply
PC Power and Cooling ULTRA-QUIET PSU: SILENCER® 610 EPS12V
So .... Have you figured out what I was doing wrong? Well, I left out
one very important fact in the message above ... because, well, it just
didn't occur to me that it was an important fact. Notice I never
mentioned in the message that I have two monitors connected to the
system -- the second monitor is a 42" Panasonic plasma screen TV that
has VGA input. It was turned off during all my efforts to get Vista
working this afternoon. If it had occurred to me to turn it on and set
it for PC input, I'd have seen my Vista desktop displayed perfectly on
the plasma screen. All I had to do was start up Catalyst Control Center
in both 32 and 64-bit Vista and activate the second monitor and swap the
two so my new desktop monitor would be the primary monitor instead of
the plasma screen and I was in business.
Now why did Vista (but not XP) decide to make the new digital monitor
the second monitor, and disable it? I have no idea. But that's what
had happened and I figured it out and now everything's working fine.
Now wasn't that fun?
go, and just before I hit the "send" button I had a brainstorm. So now
that I've solved what seemed at first to be a real puzzler, what do I do
with this long message I've spent so much time writing? Anybody want to
try to figure out what I was doing wrong? If so, read on, and maybe you
can file this in your memory banks in case it ever happens to you. If
you're not interested, well just move along. I have it all working fine
now.
Here's what I wrote:
I bought a new monitor today -- a 24" Samsung 245BW widescreen LCD.
Brought it home, disconnected the old 19" analog LCD, removed the
DVI/VGA converter, connected the new DVI cable to my ATI Radeon HD 2600
videocard and the monitor, fired up the computer, launched 32-bit
Windows XP Pro, set everything up, and it looks great.
But ...
I have a triple-boot system. I'm also running, just for the fun of it,
Vista 32-bit and Vista 64-bit. Vista looks pretty; I'm having fun with
it; I use XP for serious work; no harm with playing around. Trouble is,
when my installations of Vista look for the new monitor, they can't find
it. While Vista is finishing its load process, the monitor indicates
it's alternately looking for a digital signal or an analog signal, but
it finds nothing and eventually goes to sleep.
It's got to be a driver issue. The monitor performs fine all the way
through the load process -- the little green blocks move horizontally
just as they're supposed to. It's only when Vista should appear on the
screen that the monitor loses its signal. And the exact same thing
happens whether I'm trying to load 32-bit or 64-bit Vista. XP, as I've
said, works fine.
I've loaded the latest (well, latest 2007) Catalyst Control Center for
all three of my OSes -- XP 32-bit, Vista 32-bit, and Vista 64-bit. Of
course, when I loaded these versions of CCC, they saw an analog monitor
and apparently set themselves up accordingly. Now they're seeing a
digital monitor and XP can handle it but Vista can't. Or so it appears.
I can get into Vista using Safe Mode, but there's not much I can do with
CCC in Safe Mode. The icon doesn't appear in the systray, and when I
try to start CCC it tells me it can't run because no ATI video driver is
loaded, which is true, because I'm in Safe Mode.
I'm sure I'm missing something simple. Help, please. And thanks in
advance.
Motherboard
ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX
ProcessorIntel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA
775 Processor
MemoryCrucial 4GB kit (1GBx2), Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR2 PC2-8500
Video Card
SAPPHIRE 100210L Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR4 PCI Express x16
Video Capture
VisionTek TV Wonder ATI HD 650 PCI Express
Power Supply
PC Power and Cooling ULTRA-QUIET PSU: SILENCER® 610 EPS12V
So .... Have you figured out what I was doing wrong? Well, I left out
one very important fact in the message above ... because, well, it just
didn't occur to me that it was an important fact. Notice I never
mentioned in the message that I have two monitors connected to the
system -- the second monitor is a 42" Panasonic plasma screen TV that
has VGA input. It was turned off during all my efforts to get Vista
working this afternoon. If it had occurred to me to turn it on and set
it for PC input, I'd have seen my Vista desktop displayed perfectly on
the plasma screen. All I had to do was start up Catalyst Control Center
in both 32 and 64-bit Vista and activate the second monitor and swap the
two so my new desktop monitor would be the primary monitor instead of
the plasma screen and I was in business.
Now why did Vista (but not XP) decide to make the new digital monitor
the second monitor, and disable it? I have no idea. But that's what
had happened and I figured it out and now everything's working fine.
Now wasn't that fun?