(no subject)

[plonq]

Windows 2000 has a way of making simple things complicated.

I got a fancy new video card on Friday with multi-monitor support, and digital video out for my new flat-screen monitor.  Installing a new video card should be a fairly simple process, right?  Plug in the new card, fire up the computer and install the drivers when prompted.

The first problem I had was with the system BIOS.  It initially complained about the new card and, after fifteen minutes of tweaking and spontaneous reboots, it arbitrarily wiped all of its own settings and made me reconstruct everything from scratch.  I don't suppose I can rightly blame Win2K for that one, though.  Thanks IBM.

On Friday I spent the better part of two hours fighting Win2K, trying to get it to recognize the new hardware and drivers.  I ran a series of cycles through both safe mode and regular mode, enduring system hangs and spontaneous reboots before I finally managed to get a working display on one of the two monitors in regular mode.  Thirty minutes later I had a reasonably functional system with dual monitors.

This morning when I rebooted, things started to fall apart again.  The software that came with the video card stopped recognizing the second monitor, and its display was rotated 270 degrees.  Hmph.  After a bit of work, I managed to get Win2K to stop recognizing the drivers.  Actually I can't really claim credit for that - Win2K managed to do that on its own.  I took another trip to the world of Safe Mode, and after removing the devices and reinstalling the drivers off the network (that is, Windows did that for me without prompting), I managed to achieve nothing.  I downloaded the drivers from the manufacturer's website and installed those.  While I was at it, I also un-installed the utilities that came with the monitor.  All told it was about 90 minutes of work.

I don't know if it was the drivers, or the monitor utilities that were at fault, but it is finally working - or at least it's stable; quirky, but stable.

It should not take 3 1/2 hours to install a video card.

Comments

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

"It should not take 3 1/2 hours to install a video card."

Isn't that what we said about my video card too?

PS. 270 degrees.... let me guess: 90 counter-clockwise? Geek! :P

[elfasi.livejournal.com]

Buy a mac! ;)

[anthony-lion.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Some of them come with dual-screen support built-in...
(Like the PowerBooks) and some just needs a small 'hack' to enable it(my iBook just needs Screen Spanning Doctor to be run to enable it, but as that not only breaks the warranty, but also blows a raspberry and draws butts on it... )

Anyway, I reconfigured my PC at the office a while ago to use 2 x 19" Sony LCDs...

All I did was slot in a cheap ATI Sapphire PCI card with DVI and DHI15 connectors(It's a HP Small Form Factor desktop, so it can only take PCI and Half-height AGP... ), disabled the built-in card and booted it into XP.
A minute later I had two screens and a bit of a problem convincing XP as to how they should relate to each other and in which screen I wanted the taskbar...

Then SP2 came and I had to shuffle the screens again...
(In that case that's exactly what I did, moved the screens instead if trying to argue with the defaults M$ forced on me)

According to one of my colleagues, it's not really necessary to disable the built-in card, at least if you have another monitor to spare...
Unfortunately, it would also mean that I had to clean a bit more of my desk, and that's not... possible... at the moment...
I considered a wall-mount, but that would mean turning my desk around, or trying to hang stuff onto weak cube walls...
Also, my boss probably wouldn't let me take another 19" LCD, so I'd either have to take a 17" LCD, or, horror, a 19" CRT...

[plonq.livejournal.com]

T'would be nice, but I doubt they'd go for it. We've got way too many custom applications written for the WinTel platform.

[(Anonymous)]

"The software that came with the video card stopped recognizing the second monitor, and its display was rotated 270 degrees."

Turn your monitor on its side. You'll never go back.
(except when you want to watch a movie, or play a game - and you've got your other monitor for that, anyway)

[caveman-joe.livejournal.com]

"The software that came with the video card stopped recognizing the second monitor, and its display was rotated 270 degrees."

Turn your monitor on its side. You'll never go back.
(except when you want to watch a movie, or play a game - and you've got your other monitor for that, anyway)
*edit* - I really should log in, sorry...

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Not a bad idea at all. Unfortunately the monitor that it decided to display sideways was also the one on the KVM switch, that I share with the OS/2 box. I'd have had to rotate the moniter every time I switched machines.

(And I couldn't switch the other one, as it has DVI in, and the switch is analog.)

Hi hi.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Hullo stranger. I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess that you found me by way of... furahi?

[tarirat.livejournal.com]

The more I hear about PC/Windows problems, the more I like having an Amiga and a Mac. :o)
The Mac has never crashed since I bought it, and my Amiga's OS install is only now starting to flake out after 4 years. *giggle*

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that this is my work computer I'm talking about. It's saddled with a heavily modified, customized version of Win2K that has given me grief on a number of occasions.

As a former Amiga owner, it pains me to say this, but WinXP has actually been a pretty decent OS on my home machine; very stable and reliable.