Win7 and 1152X864 on my old Trinitron = GRRRR...=FIXED! | The Coffeehouse

dentaku

Do any of you have problems with Win7 on CRTs?

I have a 19" CRT and a 19" LCD. I always use the CRT on the left in 1152X864 as monitor #1 and the LCD in 1440X900 on the right as #2. In Vista and XP it's always worked fine.

In Win7 64bit build 7100 and the PDC version (I don't remember the version number) I can't use 1152X864 correctly on my CRT and for some reason it always thinks the LCD is #1. I can make the CRT my primary and it works like always but it's still annoying that the CRT is still named #2.

What I mean by using the CRT in 1152X864 correctly is that when I set Win7 to use that resolution my video card (GeForce 8800GTS) just puts out a 1280X1024 signal to my monitor (the onscreen display of the monitor even says so) with a little 1152X864 picture centered in it so I have big 3cm black borders and the text isn't any bigger because it's still just running 1280X1024.

I tried using both the windows update nvidia drivers, the 64bit Win7 drivers from Nvidias website and the Vista 64 drivers but it still doesn't work correctly.

androidi

I'll have to check that out when I get around to installing the RC. I have similar setup with CRT as primary at 1600x1024 where the text is sharper than at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200.

dentaku

In reply to androidi

#May 10th @ 11:32 AM

It's just plain weird. It's like it won't let the video card output anything other than 1280X1024, 1024X768 and 800x600.
Everything other resolution doesn't show up until you hover over them and when I choose them I get those weird results.

Hmmm.... Maybe if I get it to forget that it's a Dell P991 and just use it as a generic monitor.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

In reply to dentaku

#May 12th @ 4:24 PM

It's possible to configure your NVidia drivers to use custom dimensions and timing modes to get it to work right.

These steps apply to the old control panel system the drivers used, but it's probably still there in the new drivers.

As an aside, have you asked in the NZone forums?

dentaku

In reply to W3bbo

#May 12th @ 4:31 PM

I've tried creating a custom resolution in the Nvidia control panel and it just gives me an error.

androidi

I made upgrade install from Vista 64 and looks like in Win 7 my wifi driver was deemed incompatible so lost network, looking at the available drivers I however did find Win 7 to come with the driver for the actual wifi chip .. Just had to manually install it. It refused to work at first, but after entering the AP password again it worked - Win7 did not give any obvious popup the pass was wrong though, there was just error about auth in the status.

Next thing I looked at was this. Indeed, with the new NVIDIA driver for 8800 GT that got installed during the upgrade, 1152x864 gives some kind of weird scaled display where the hardware output is 1280x1024 but there are 1152x864 pixels and the text looks all fuzzy and crap.

intelman

My 8800GT had the same issue. To be fair, my ATI card works perfectly though.

dentaku

In reply to androidi

#May 14th @ 3:27 AM

"Next thing I looked at was this. Indeed, with the new NVIDIA driver for 8800 GT that got installed during the upgrade, 1152x864 gives some kind of weird scaled display where the hardware output is 1280x1024 but there are 1152x864 pixels and the text looks all fuzzy and crap."

Yup, I got that too at first but after installing the Nvidia drivers at least it wasn't weird and scaled but it's still a little box in the middle of the screen with big black borders.

I think I'm going to go look at an Nvidia forum and see if people have found a way to fix this.

androidi

I got it fixed now (somewhat) but it should be easier than this.

Here's what I did, might not apply to you equally:

Note! I first tried #3 straight and it didn't seem to work but now I've discovered the custom resolutions is bit buggy so it might work or might not without the 1-2 step.

1. Updated to latest driver that came out recently in WU, it did not fix the issue

2. installed monitor driver - looks like during upgrade the monitor driver got uninstalled.

(2b. Actually it refused to install the monitor driver from Samsung's original inf, so what I did was find the Monitor.inf from System32\DriverStore and looked at what was the closest model available and added my resolution there just to be sure)

3. That didn't actually seem to do much of anything. So I went to the Nvidia Control panel that now appeared after driver update and into the custom resolutions. First I tried using the simple settings, just setting res,refresh and keep in Auto. Didn't fix it. So then I tried to put it into various other positions (GTF,CVT).. That seemed to finally do the trick. The DMT setting seems to be broken in Win7 as that results in the incorrect resolution.

Conclusion: The new Win7 aren't 100% identical since the same settings (Auto/DMT) couldn't be used and I hadn't backed up the old custom values so Manual was out of the question. I can see from User timings screen on the monitor that the new settings aren't exactly same and the text is a bit fuzzier still. Bleh.

So if you still have Vista there with the OK settings, create a custom resolution using the good settings as template and take up the values so you can get them right in Win7 as the Auto/DMT setting is broken.

Here's boring explanation of those:

Generalized Timing Formula (GTF) is a method of generating industry standard timings used by a wide variety of display products

Display Monitor Timings (DMT) are a list of VESA standard pre-defined timings which are commonly used within the Computer industry.

Coordinated Video Timings (CVT) were released on March 2003 as the newest VESA standard for generating display timings

Coordinated Video Timings-Reduced Blanking (CVT-RB) is geared specifically for non-CRT display devices. CVT-RB offers reduced horizontal and vertical blanking periods and allows a lower pixel clock rate and higher frame rates.

EDID Timing is the preferred timing standard defined by the display's Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) value. EDID is a standard data structure that defines the display device's configuration data and mode support which allows optimum use of the display

androidi

In reply to androidi

#May 14th @ 8:28 PM

There appears to be further issues:

I can't delete a custom resolution and after rebooting I had to go edit+test the desired custom resolution to get it active again.

dentaku

In reply to androidi

#May 15th @ 1:34 PM

I just un-installed all Nvidia drivers and restarted in Safe Mode and ran a program called Driver Sweeper (I usually don't trust software like this but I have nothing to lose on a test system) then installed the Win7 64bit Nvidia drivers again. Some files where missing because Driver Sweeper removed them so I just re-installed the drivers and restarted again.

I still got a small 1152X864 screen in a 1280X1024 screen SO I went to the Nvidia Control Panel and checked Allow modes not exposed by the display then clicked Apply.
Next I made a custom resolution of 1152X864 85Hz 32bit and changed it to GTF. Finally it didn't give me an error when I clicked Test and I'm using 1152X864 correctly.

This time I did this all with ONLY the CRT plugged in so maybe that helped too. Bow that I have my second monitor plugged in it still thinks that it's monitor #1 and the CRT is #2 but I guess that doesn't matter much because I just make sure that #2 is set to be the primary display and it works like it always has.