Any Way to Configure RADEON Displays Tab Via Registry?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Will
  • Start date Start date
W

Will

Using Catalyst 5.11 with the RADEON X800GT, I'm finding that the Displays
tab is defective. The drivers don't recognize any monitor as attached to
the system. That means that by default the Displays tab is activated with
1600x1200 as the maximum resolution, and any desktop resolution higher than
this ends up scrolling inside the Displays "limits". The monitor I'm using
is a Sony 24" monitor capable of 2048x1536. Is there any way to tweak the
Displays settings in the registry of Windows and not rely on the buggy
Control Panel interface?

Note that I discovered when you create a custom Displays scheme and save it,
that two entries appear associated with the scheme name in the registry:

SchemeHeight
SchemeWidth

I did of course attempt to change those manually to the correct values, and
then I reapplied the display scheme. This did NOT affect the Displays
settings, so I suspect ATI is encoding those values in other ways in the
registry. If someone knows how to affect Displays settings without
relying on Control Panel I would appreciate information about how to hack
this.
 
Will said:
Using Catalyst 5.11 with the RADEON X800GT, I'm finding that the Displays
tab is defective. The drivers don't recognize any monitor as attached to
the system. That means that by default the Displays tab is activated with
1600x1200 as the maximum resolution, and any desktop resolution higher than
this ends up scrolling inside the Displays "limits". The monitor I'm using
is a Sony 24" monitor capable of 2048x1536. Is there any way to tweak the
Displays settings in the registry of Windows and not rely on the buggy
Control Panel interface?

Note that I discovered when you create a custom Displays scheme and save it,
that two entries appear associated with the scheme name in the registry:

SchemeHeight
SchemeWidth

I did of course attempt to change those manually to the correct values, and
then I reapplied the display scheme. This did NOT affect the Displays
settings, so I suspect ATI is encoding those values in other ways in the
registry. If someone knows how to affect Displays settings without
relying on Control Panel I would appreciate information about how to hack
this.
Click to expand...
Try install your monitor's drivers.
 
Will said:
Using Catalyst 5.11 with the RADEON X800GT, I'm finding that the
Displays
tab is defective. The drivers don't recognize any monitor as
attached to
the system. That means that by default the Displays tab is
activated with
1600x1200 as the maximum resolution, and any desktop resolution
higher than
this ends up scrolling inside the Displays "limits". The monitor
I'm using
Click to expand...

I had the exact same problem when trying to install a Dell 2405fpw (on
a Radeon 8500). The fix was to manually (re)install the monitor
drivers.
 
I did this, but it didn't work.

There is a promising setting that enclodes the maximum display resolution in
one of the registry keys inside


\\HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{current-display-identifier}\0
000

I did try changing that and rebooting, but it gets reset back to 1600x1200
(encoded in a hexadecimal format in the maxdisplay setting. So the primary
display characteristics are inheriting from some other key and I haven't
been able to locate it so far.

What exactly did ATI hope to accomplish by hard coding Display settings that
are different than the ones associated with the selected monitor? It just
creates unnecessary additional abstractions and complications.
 
Will said:
Using Catalyst 5.11 with the RADEON X800GT, I'm finding that the
Displays tab is defective. The drivers don't recognize any monitor
as attached to the system. That means that by default the Displays
tab is activated with 1600x1200 as the maximum resolution, and any
desktop resolution higher than this ends up scrolling inside the
Displays "limits". The monitor I'm using is a Sony 24" monitor
capable of 2048x1536. Is there any way to tweak the Displays
settings in the registry of Windows and not rely on the buggy Control
Panel interface?

Note that I discovered when you create a custom Displays scheme and
save it, that two entries appear associated with the scheme name in
the registry:

SchemeHeight
SchemeWidth

I did of course attempt to change those manually to the correct
values, and then I reapplied the display scheme. This did NOT
affect the Displays settings, so I suspect ATI is encoding those
values in other ways in the registry. If someone knows how to
affect Displays settings without relying on Control Panel I would
appreciate information about how to hack this.
Click to expand...


http://www.entechtaiwan.net/util/multires.shtm

This gives me the option to change to the resolution you're looking for and
my monitor isn't even capable of it.
 
I installed multires but it didn't fix anything. In fact the problem is
worse with Multires. With the normal Display Properties tab of Windows, I
can at least change the resolution to for example 2048x1536, and this large
resolution gets mapped into what ATI incorrectly believes is the maximum
display real estate of 1600x1200. I can move the mouse over to the
corners/edges to move the underlying virtual desktop around inside the
actual desktop's smaller borders. With Multires, it refuses to let you
select any resolution that exceeds what Windows shows as the displays
maximum resolution.

What I want is a way to modify the actual Display maximum resolution
properties. This is NOT the same as the currently selected desktop
resolution. I don't find any way to set the Display properties in Windows.
With ATI RADEON drivers, you need to modify the settings on the Displays
tab, which is a custom ATI tab. The whole problem I am having is that the
Display tab in ATI's tool is just broken. It seems to think no monitor is
installed and it greys out the Monitor Properties button and I cannot select
it in order to modify it.

The Multires "Display properties" tab gives no interface to the same
information. This simply pops up the normal Windows Display Properties
dialog with no improvements/changes.
 
Will said:
I installed multires but it didn't fix anything. In fact the
problem is worse with Multires. With the normal Display Properties
tab of Windows, I can at least change the resolution to for example
2048x1536, and this large resolution gets mapped into what ATI
incorrectly believes is the maximum display real estate of 1600x1200.
I can move the mouse over to the corners/edges to move the underlying
virtual desktop around inside the actual desktop's smaller borders.
With Multires, it refuses to let you select any resolution that
exceeds what Windows shows as the displays maximum resolution.

What I want is a way to modify the actual Display maximum resolution
properties. This is NOT the same as the currently selected desktop
resolution. I don't find any way to set the Display properties in
Windows. With ATI RADEON drivers, you need to modify the settings on
the Displays tab, which is a custom ATI tab. The whole problem I am
having is that the Display tab in ATI's tool is just broken. It
seems to think no monitor is installed and it greys out the Monitor
Properties button and I cannot select it in order to modify it.

The Multires "Display properties" tab gives no interface to the same
information. This simply pops up the normal Windows Display
Properties dialog with no improvements/changes.
Click to expand...
of it.

Powerstrip should be able to help you with this.

http://www.entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm
 
Powerstrip looks like a great utility, but it didn't solve the problem.
Powerstrip clearly reported that I had a Sony GDM-FW900 24" monitor with
2304 x 1536 maximum resolution loaded. But the ATI RADEON drivers Advanced
monitor settings Displays tab still shows the monitor as greyed out.

The solution to me is obvious. On the Troubleshoot dialog of the Displays
tab there is a "Force recognition of TV" checkbox. How hard would it be
for them to just add "Force recognition of monitor" checkbox as a companion?
That would force the monitor settings to be available, and once configured
to greater than 1600x1200 I would be able to use larger resolutions.

No one at ATI seems to care.
 
Will said:
Powerstrip looks like a great utility, but it didn't solve the
problem.
Powerstrip clearly reported that I had a Sony GDM-FW900 24" monitor
with
2304 x 1536 maximum resolution loaded. But the ATI RADEON drivers
Advanced
monitor settings Displays tab still shows the monitor as greyed out.

The solution to me is obvious. On the Troubleshoot dialog of the
Displays
tab there is a "Force recognition of TV" checkbox. How hard would
it be
for them to just add "Force recognition of monitor" checkbox as a
companion?
That would force the monitor settings to be available, and once
configured
to greater than 1600x1200 I would be able to use larger resolutions.

No one at ATI seems to care.
Click to expand...

What is curious is that you seem to be the only one with this problem.
 
Will said:
Powerstrip looks like a great utility, but it didn't solve the
problem. Powerstrip clearly reported that I had a Sony GDM-FW900 24"
monitor with 2304 x 1536 maximum resolution loaded. But the ATI
RADEON drivers Advanced monitor settings Displays tab still shows the
monitor as greyed out.

The solution to me is obvious. On the Troubleshoot dialog of the
Displays tab there is a "Force recognition of TV" checkbox. How
hard would it be for them to just add "Force recognition of monitor"
checkbox as a companion? That would force the monitor settings to be
available, and once configured to greater than 1600x1200 I would be
able to use larger resolutions.

No one at ATI seems to care.
Click to expand...

I'm not quite undestanding this. You seem to be talking about the ATI
Control Panel settings or the Catylyst Control Center. You don't need these
in order to change display settings for your monitor. I'm using ATI Tray
Tools. I just install the driver and don't mess with installing the Control
Center anymore as I really don't need it. But, even without that you can
still change monitor settings under Display
Properties/Settings/Advanced/Adapter/List All Modes.
I use the MultiRes program as a quicker method for this.
Using Powerstrip you should be able to create any custom display setting you
want. If Powerstrip reported that setting why are you not able to switch to
that resolution using that program?
 
You need to install the full ATI drivers to see the extra interface I am
describing. In the full ATI install with ATI Control Panel, there is an
extra tab named "Displays". The settings that you specify there for the
monitor are *independent* of the Display Properties settings that are set by
any of:

Display Properties | Settings tab
Display Properties | Advanced | Adapter
Powerstrip
ATI Tray Tools

Instead, the resolution on the Displays tab acts as a kind of filter on the
Display Properties resolution. If the Displays tab is set to 1600x1200 and
the Display Properties says 2048x1536, what you end up with is a 2048 x 1536
virtual desktop mapped into a 1600x1200 physical desktop. I don't
understand why they chose to involve the user of a high resolution monitor
into that kind of complexity as a default condition, but they do.

The *default* resolution on the Displays tab is 1600x1200. So when you
exceed this default resolution, you get the virtual mapping effect I
described. It's easy on most of my ATI RADEON installations to just use
Displays to set the maximum resolution as high or higher than you want to go
on Display Properties. On one of my installs, the Displays tab has its
Monitor button *greyed out*. So I cannot change the default resolution.

Now, to the good news. I tried your suggestion below, using List All Modes
to explicitly set the resolution. That by itself didn't work. I got the
virtual mapping as before. However, as a side effect of setting the
resolution this way, now all of a sudden the Displays tab shows the monitor
button enabled! I was then able to reset the Displays resolution to higher
than my Display Properties, and now everything works fine.

So, the bottom line, is that you helped me to discover a second bug that
corrects the first bug. I'll take it. :) Thank you!!
 
Whatever works I guess....lol.

Will said:
You need to install the full ATI drivers to see the extra interface I am
describing. In the full ATI install with ATI Control Panel, there is an
extra tab named "Displays". The settings that you specify there for the
monitor are *independent* of the Display Properties settings that are set
by
any of:

Display Properties | Settings tab
Display Properties | Advanced | Adapter
Powerstrip
ATI Tray Tools

Instead, the resolution on the Displays tab acts as a kind of filter on
the
Display Properties resolution. If the Displays tab is set to 1600x1200
and
the Display Properties says 2048x1536, what you end up with is a 2048 x
1536
virtual desktop mapped into a 1600x1200 physical desktop. I don't
understand why they chose to involve the user of a high resolution monitor
into that kind of complexity as a default condition, but they do.

The *default* resolution on the Displays tab is 1600x1200. So when you
exceed this default resolution, you get the virtual mapping effect I
described. It's easy on most of my ATI RADEON installations to just use
Displays to set the maximum resolution as high or higher than you want to
go
on Display Properties. On one of my installs, the Displays tab has its
Monitor button *greyed out*. So I cannot change the default resolution.

Now, to the good news. I tried your suggestion below, using List All
Modes
to explicitly set the resolution. That by itself didn't work. I got the
virtual mapping as before. However, as a side effect of setting the
resolution this way, now all of a sudden the Displays tab shows the
monitor
button enabled! I was then able to reset the Displays resolution to
higher
than my Display Properties, and now everything works fine.

So, the bottom line, is that you helped me to discover a second bug that
corrects the first bug. I'll take it. :) Thank you!!
Click to expand...
 
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