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.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-08-26 12:53 am (UTC)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.