bitching and moaning

[baratron]

i dislike pain that doesn't repond to Tramadol. i hope it settles soon. the hospital only want to see me if i have a temperature or other signs of infection.

also, i don't get it - richard plugged the old laptop into the monitor and it displayed immediately. this new one, we've tried everything, even installing new "second display" drivers from the cd that came with the tv, and it won't. i am unsure whether to blame microsoft, sony or samsung. or richard - having bought this vaio because he was impressed with one that one of his cow-orkers has, he JUST remembered that his cow-orker spent an entire day trying to get it to talk to an external display. hrm! and, of course, he rememebred this at 10.40pm, when it was too late to ring said cow-orker to find out what he'd had to do. i wouldn't mind, except i want to play the sims, and the old laptop can't even manage sims 1 anymore.

this is a good post, doing the rounds of my flist. it explains why i can never get involved with someone who isn't already a friend, and why i boggle at people who say they can't possibly date a friend. if you don't already like someone, how can you love them? r was my best friend before we got involved, and he still is. we both think if we no longer had a romantic r'ship, we'd probably still live together.

Comments

[aca.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't need any odd drivers, but vaio's do disable the second monitor by default. Connect the second monitor and press Fn-F7 and it should spring to life.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Doesn't work :(

We connect the second monitor, and boot the laptop - the Vaio bootup screen appears, then the BIOS checking equipment screen appears, then the Windows login screen. This appears for only a few seconds, then disappears and the monitor displays its "lost signal" message.

I don't get how come the bootup screens appear on the second monitor yet Windows utterly refuses to.

[aca.livejournal.com]

Well, normally at bootup the 2nd monitor mirrors the first, then once you get into windows you get your dual head setup. Sounds like maybe your resolution or refresh rate it outside the monitors spec?

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't be - it's a brand new monitor. The monitor's resolution is 1280 x 800, and it can do 60, 70 & 75 Hz. The laptop's resolution is only 1280 x 768.

It just doesn't make any sense, it's driving me insane. The Windows troubleshooter doesn't help because it assumes that you have 2 display adapters installed separately, and this machine only has one. Supposedly, the single card can handle 2 outputs - it's an Nvidia Geforce Go 6200.

Peter can connect his Vaio to a monitor directly without any faffing at all, but his is the smaller model and has a different graphics card.

[aca.livejournal.com]

What res is the second screen set to in Display Properties? Try taking it down a little, sometimes laptop gfx chipsets don't have the memory to drive 2 monitors at full res, full colour.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I am so utterly confused and stressed out.

The purpose of this exercise is to drive a monitor that is mounted above the bed, so that I can use the computer lying down without having to strain to see the laptop screen. Thus, we are simply trying to "clone" the display. This should be utterly feasible, because the external monitor has a better resolution than the laptop screen AND can run at a higher refresh rate. But it just won't happen.

Every single time, you boot the laptop, the Vaio bootup screen appears on both the laptop screen and the external monitor screen. Then the BIOS checking equipment screen appears, then the Windows login screen. It displays for all of a few seconds, then the external monitor "gives up", and displays the "lost signal" message. Once the signal has been "lost", the only way to get it back is to reboot the laptop.

There is nothing wrong with the monitor or cable, as we can plug our ancient laptop directly into it without any faffing whatsoever. I'm assuming this HAS to be a Windows XP problem, as the picture only disappears when XP starts. The only way we can get a picture to stay on the external monitor while Windows runs is to boot Windows XP in Safe mode, which is useless for running Sims 2.

Yeah, it COULD be that the graphics card can't power 2 monitors at once at full resolution - but I don't even WANT to power 2 monitors at once. I just want the picture to appear on the external monitor, I don't care about the internal screen because I can't see it. But if we use EITHER the Vaio F7 or Windows' own monitor choosing thingy to tell it to display only on the external monitor, we end up with no visible picture, because it fucks off at the login screen.

The Vaio troubleshooting thing is completely useless because it assumes you are running the second monitor off a secondary display adapter, but we don't have one. Do we need to get one? If so, why on earth does the Vaio bother to have a video out port, if it can't actually be used? And how come it works in Safe mode but not normal?

[aca.livejournal.com]

The purpose of this exercise is to drive a monitor that is mounted above the bed

Ah, ok. How long is the cable you're using?

There is nothing wrong with the monitor or cable, as we can plug our ancient laptop directly into it without any faffing whatsoever.

What res do you drive the monitor at with the old laptop?

I'm assuming this HAS to be a Windows XP problem, as the picture only disappears when XP starts.

The fact you're seeing the login screen briefly, at full res, suggests to me that it's not a software or driver issue. I actually think that you might be pushing the tolerance of the monitor by sending a high resolution over a long cable, possibly from a laptop using less power to drive the VGA in the first place. Lots of factors, y'see.

As a test, would it be possible to connect the laptop temporarily with a much shorter cable and see how it fairs driving the monitor? Alternativly, since you're cloning, drive both screens at a lower res and see if you see the same problem.

My reasoning is, since you *can* run in safe mode with a cloned screen, it's the resolution you're trying to achieve which is causing you problems. Due to the wonderful vagueries of analog video signalling over VGA cables your new laptop and the new resolution might just be too much for the monitor to cope with, taking into account the impedance over the long cable run to get to the ceiling.

This is all guesswork, but then troubleshooting remotely is tricky for this kind of thing. Let me know how it goes. :)

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I'm tired and stressed and trying not to be rude, because I do appreciate your help. But you are really on a wild goose chase. It's so not the resolution.

As the second monitor behaves as expected if Windows is booted in Safe Mode, pretty much the first thing we tried was to boot Windows at 800x600, the same resolution as Safe Mode. No dice. Plus, to really prove it's not the resolution - booting Windows in VGA mode (600x480) doesn't work!

If lower resolution, and even lower bit colour doesn't keep the picture, then the key to why Safe Mode does must be that Safe Mode boots Windows with a reduced set of drivers, right? The Vaio has a stupid number of programs that are all competing to control how many monitors are attached: there's the Vaio's own switcher, the nVidia panel AND Windows Control Panel --> Display Settings. 3 separate programs to do one task? Seems very likely to be a conflict - especially as some of these drivers only start up at the point where Windows itself boots. What we need to do is find out which of these drivers are disabled in Safe Mode, and then disable the same one in normal bootup. Except it seems impossible to actually keep any of them disabled.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Disabling the Vaio Event Service solves the problem.

This is somewhat non-ideal, because it loses ALL the function key configs, not just the F7 that was interfering with the nVidia settings - but at least it works :) Stupid Sony, putting in software that conflicts with the hardware...

[aca.livejournal.com]

Now that is odd, since I've gotten the display switching stuff working on vanilla linux kernels without running a service. I could understand the volume and brightness stuff breaking.

Ah well, at least the external display is doing the right thing at this point...

[aca.livejournal.com]

As the second monitor behaves as expected if Windows is booted in Safe Mode, pretty much the first thing we tried was to boot Windows at 800x600

A piece of information you failed to share up to this point, rather leading to the chase of wild geese.

What we need to do is find out which of these drivers are disabled in Safe Mode, and then disable the same one in normal bootup. Except it seems impossible to actually keep any of them disabled.

The vaio's own switcher is done at hardware level, requires no drivers, and meets your needs (cloning). I'd suggest you uninstall the nvidia bits, disable the second display in the windows settings and go from there.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Nope - I said that Safe Mode works here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/baratron/321689.html?thread=1192857#t1192857) :) Unless you mean the information that it didn't work at 800x600? I tried that as soon as you suggested it might be the resolution - that was how come I was able to state categorically that it wasn't the resolution that was the problem! I took it for granted that you realised I'd tried it, which was why I got annoyed that you kept insisting I should try it... um, crossed wires, or something. (Too much doing tech support for non-geeks?)

It's all irrelevant now, we've got it working. We've got a script to disable the Sony switcher, it's neater to do it that way, as the nVidia controller allows you to do a lot more than straight cloning. Plus we kinda trust it more.