Video Driver or Vista issue?

[Guest]

I have been running Vista Home Premium with an ATI x1600Pro for a couple of
months, and it always showed the video adapter driver twice in the Device
Manager (Primary and Secondary - the card supports 2 monitors). I ordered a
second monitor (same model as current one, Dell 1907fp ultrasharp) and
upgraded to Vista Ultimate at the same time. Now under Ultimate in the device
manager, there's only one video adapter showing, and it refuses to
acknowledge the second monitor (the light on the monitor is solid amber). The
secondary port DOES show up in the Device Manager in safe mode! I am not sure
if the secondary port disappeared after upgrading to the 7.4 ATI drivers, or
after the upgrade to Ultimate; unfortunately I wasn't looking at that at the
time but it seems like one of them must be the culprit.

I've tested the monitors and cables on another system, done all the updates
for both ATI and Dell, reseated the card, and swapped cables and monitors,
and finally even bought another video card (this time the ATI x1650 Pro),
same results. When the monitor 2 is unplugged, it shows the self-test screen,
when plugged in it says "2: Digital Input In Power Save Mode" when I push the
Menu button.

When I picked up the new video card, I uninstalled the ATI drivers, and
switched out cards. Vista loaded it's default drivers, and BOTH ports showed
up in the Device Manager, but no way to extend the desktop to the other
monitor on basic drivers, and the system blue screens on bootup. As soon as I
put in the current ATI driver, *poof* no second port. Oddly, when I turn the
blank monitor off and back on, the device manager will refresh itself, so
it's getting SOME sort of signal...

The computer is a Dell XPS410, with 2gb ram, and I spent a good 4 hours with
Dell support, so I'm fairly sure all that is working fine.

I've got a ticket submitted to the ATI folks days ago, but no answer yet.

 

[Kris]

Wow, no one wants to touch this one, eh? LOL

How about another direction? I'll switch cards if I have to... Can anyone
recommend a completely different card, (Nvidia maybe?) that would run two
digital monitors well on Vista Ultimate, and use completely different
drivers? Something that Vista seems to get along with, of course...

 

[katy]

Hi Kris, if nobody bites here, I know a guy, Jay is his name, in
computerhaven.com that does dual monitors, is a tester for Vista (Ultimate),
if no one here can help, maybe he can not guaranteed that he uses
different drivers tho.
katy

 

[Kris]

It's ok, I'm trying absolutely everything I can think of, and just borrowed
an Nvidia card from someone - it runs both monitors great, it's just not
quite enough to run some of my games (Oblivion just laughed at me!). Sooo...
if ATI can't sort the problem out, since now it' obviously a driver issue,
I'll just go buy a nice Nvidia card!