Calling All Geeks -- Dual Monitor Problems

[Jack Hogoboom]

I have a nice dual monitor set-up at work. Had my kids in with me on Thursday for "Take Your Kid to Work Day". Oldest son sees my set-up and, of course, wants the same thing at home. Like an idiot, I don't shoot him down, as I have a spare monitor or two.:rolleyes: So off we go this morning to CompUSA. With the help of a friendly salesperson, we buy a GeForce 6600 card with an AGP interface that has both VGA and DVI-I outputs. Installation of the card and the drivers went without a hitch. Tried to hook up the monitors. That's where my problem started. The software sees both monitors, but the monitor hooked up to the DVI-I output is blank. It says it's receiving no signal. To make sure it's not a monitor problem, I hooked that monitor up to the VGA output and it worked fine. This monitor has both a VGA and DVI-I input, so I hooked both inputs into it. It "sees" the VGA, but not the DVI-I. Worried that it might be a cable problem, I hooked the original monitor to the DVI-I output and the same thing happens: software sees both monitors but no output to the one hooked up to the DVI-I interface.

I looked online and couldn't find anything that could explain the probem. I am worried that I got a faulty card, but it does see both monitors.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would really appreciate some advice.

Thanks,

Jack

[Jerry Vander Till]

Jack,

I talked to my supertech son and here's what he had to say.

If you right click on your desktop, one of the options that comes up is NVidia. Select that because you need to tell your video card you are using both monitors. You can also select two options, the second monitor can mirror the first or it can be set to pan from one to the other. This information can not be set using the Windows settings.

Hope this helps,

[Jack Hogoboom]

Jerry,

Thanks to you and your son. Unfortunately, I did all of that and the software clearly sees both monitors. The problem seems to be with nothing coming out of the DVI output to the second monitor.:confused:

Jack

[Kirk (KC) Constable]

No help here...we have dual monitors at work (some folks have TRIPLE!), and as far as I'm concerned, they're a PITA. I've gotten used to them, and as long as everything stays 'right' they're okay...but for whatever reason, they get confused somehow and the primary changes from left to right...and the mouse gets wanky...and things open up on the wrong montior. :mad:

The other night the icons were on the wrong screen, in addition to the above things. I never did figure out how to fix the icons, and ended up dragging them over manually.

KC

[Matt Meiser]

Personally, I'd exchange the card for a different one and rule out the card.

[Christopher Stahl]

Jack, this may be a stupid question, but did you cycle through the inputs on your monitor?

[Dave Fifield]

There are several different flavors of DVI cable/interface Jack. This website explains them quite well - http://www.directron.com/dviguide.html - you may well be trying to hook up a DVI-A (analog) output from the video card to a DVI-D (digital) input on your LCD. I don't know enough about your video card or LCD monitor, or DVI cable to tell from this distance, but I'm sure you'll be able to check the drawings/pictures on this website and figure out if you have a mismatch.

If you don't have a mismatch, or both ends are DVI-I (both analog and digital capable) then your problem most likely lies with the software driver or the resolution settings of your main monitor channel. If the resolution is set too high, the driver may (just guessing/clutching at straws here...) decide there isn't enough RAM on the video card to service another monitor screen and thus makes it blank.

Hope you find the solution. FWIW I run two 23" LCD hi-res 1900x1200 monitors on my dual G5 Mac natively (came with the capability built-in) in my studio. In my experience, it pays to have both monitors the same type and set to the same resolution so you have a seamless large screen where objects are the same size on either monitor.

Cheers,
Dave Fifield

[Dave Fifield]

Update - I found a spec for your video card online. It has a DVI-I output, so as long as you have a DVI-I cable, or a cable that matches the DVI input type on your monitor, then the problem isn't the DVI hardware interface.

What monitor/s are you using?

Dave Fifield

[Jim Becker]

Does the card allow both interfaces to be active simultaneously???

[Jack Hogoboom]

To All:

Thanks for all of your input.

Christopher, I thought about switching the inputs on the monitor too. However, when I forced it to DVI, it indicated that it wasn't getting a signal from the DVI output. It works fine hooked up to the VGA port.

Dave, I'm intrigued by the different DVI outputs, but that wouldn't explain my problem. The card comes with a DVI-to-VGA adapter. When I used that to hook up a regular VGA monitor to the card, that monitor doesn't get any signal either. And I seriously doubt it is the board RAM as it has 128MB and is specifically designed for dual monitor use.

I'm using a 19" NEC MultiSync monitor for the DVI hookup, although, as mentioned above, the DVI output didn't work with a ViewSonic monitor with a VGA adapter either. The part that is weird to me is that the software driver can "see" both monitors. If the DVI port was bad, I would've thought it wouldn't be able to see the monitor hooked up to that port.

Making things more frustrating, I called the manufacturer's tech support line this morning and was on hold for more than an hour before I gave up.

One of my in-house techs, offered to see if he could get the card to work on one of our set-ups. I have a feeling this one is going back to CompUSA....:(

Jack

[Mike Ruane]

Long shot, but have you verified that the refresh rate is set correctly for the LCD? Can't think of many other reasons a signal wouldn't be detected.