video card settings

greetings geeks,

it seems my video monitor died.

i have a newer model gateway desktop, that is now running windozeXP on a partition instead of vista which it came with. the no longer functioning monitor is a 22" envision.
what seems to be happening is that video card is set for a 22" monitor so when i switched monitors to my 17" sylvania that i use with a different computer it gives me the out of range message. what i would like to know is how to get the gateway set up to use the 17" until i can get a new 22". this seems trivial and i bet it's solvable by a more knowledgeable person here.

thanks,
crystal

 

you have a deffinate problem, with out being to physically go into windows and change the resolution to the new monitor, im not to sure how to fix the problem. but if you have another moniter with the same resolution, change it to your new resolution, and it should work.
if that make sence yeah! if not im sorry, just me trying to help

 

You need to select a resolution and refresh rate that the 17" can use. If you can boot into XP right click on the desktop and choose a resolution like 1024x768 and a refresh rate of 70 or 75hz.

Sam

 

thanks fatjake i unfortunately don't have another 22" monitor.

sam: thanks but the problem is that i never get that far. after boot up the screen goes "out of range"

eventually i will get another 22" screen but for now i have an extra 17".

 

Can you boot into safe mode (press F8 before Windows starts loading)? If you can, delete the video card driver and video card then boot normally and let XP detect the card and install a driver. You should then be able to set the video to what the monitor can handle.

Sam

 

Was one monitor HD and the other not?

If so many monitors have a menu on the monitor itself that sometimes auto detects and others are manual.
This seems like something in the monitor settings to me, not Windows.
Or possibly the cable is screwy if it's a different cable.

The Out of Range thing as far as I know doesn't have anything to do with the size of the monitor but more the frequency mode.

 

hmm, curiouser and curiouser...,

i hit the piggy bank and took the $300 i was hoping to blow on music equip or software and bought a 23" monitor. figured that, like most problems -if you throw money at them they 'might' go away.

same thing- after boot up, screen goes blank with out of range message.

f2 gets me into bios, but i see no way of getting it to boot in safe mode from inside the bios

f10 gets me into boot order

none of the monitors are HD.

i personally had only ever seen an out of range message like this when i had a gadget for switching one monitor and one keyboard between two machines. sometimes when i switched from one to the other it came up and i would have to restart the currently selected machine.


thanks for the suggestions so far,
guess i should be happy i have more than one computer...

 

cable is good. new monitor is good.

although i have lots more research to do on video cards and settings but that's another story which i can figure out myself.

 

is your old monitor really bad? have you checked it on another computer?

 

This is an interesting one!

I personally think this is a cable problem, can you use another one to check?

Can you try booting using onboard video?

 

yes, interesting...perhaps annoying even :>)

plugged the new monitor with the old cable into the other desktop (running XP) that sits next to the problem one and it worked. (couldn't figure out how to set it to the proper resolution 1920x1090 but in general it worked)

finally got the machine to boot in safe mode...no difference. actually one of my HD s was running like crazy in safe mode but nothing different.

now i have a question: the logo that i see on screen at beginning of boot up--does it come from the bios? what i am wondering is why i can see that but once the mchine is fully running i get the "out of range screen"?

i guess i will bang my head on this some more today and if i don't have it working i am going to go see an independent computer repair. whatever it will costr i could probably have earned in the same or less time.
advantage:less stress
disadvantage:i don't learn more about the inner workings

lesson: full image backup on external HD and i would be making music instead of typing this.

i'm still up for ideas today and quite appreciate everyone taking time to try helping

 

Re: video card settings SOLVED

greets geeks,

like most computer problems the answer is simple to someone who repairs computers everyday, at least it was for my local repair shop guy.

boot into VGA mode via F8

like duh. i must have seen that option last night when i finally got this thing recognize F8 and boot into safe mode.
the real hassle i had was not being able to get it into safe mode easily. it took many tries each time, last night and again after i called my local shop. this through me off a bit. i was reading a post on a different topic where i saw someone mention to just keep trying and trying the F8 button til you get safe mode. so first time i tried F2 or F10 no problem at all, up to 6 or 7 tries for F8. just another one of those idiosyncracies.

so, old monitor is dead, old cable is good, new monitor is better than the old monitor (even when it worked:>). the 22" LCD monitor that just died was only 2 years old, the newest of the three that i have.

thanks for all the suggestions and time taken to post everyone, much appreciated. best i can say is that as i figure out this stuff i will hopefully learn a few things i can pass on to the next person via these forums.

 

Hi,
You are correct. It is difficult to get to safe mode because you have to hit it at the right time. To make it easy just keep tapping F8 from the time you hit the go button and you will never miss it.

Good Luck, Jim

 

Glad to hear you solved it.

Shame you had to pay for someone to have a look at it for you.

Sometimes its hard for us, cos we cant physically see the product.

 

actually didn't pay, just called and the dude told me to look for the boot into VGA mode. i was almost ready to pay but it takes a lot to get me to actually part with money when it comes to computer problems.

 

Nice one!

Thats always the best way,