help with dual-video on laptops

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Lurker at Large

One of our customers recently bought a bunch of laptops and flat panel
monitors for an upcoming project. I just popped one laptop and monitor out of
the boxes and am trying to configure it for him. Our software works best on a
dual-video configuration, so this is why we're configuring them this way. This
is my first time working with dual-video on a laptop, so I could be doing
something silly.
The laptop is a Compaq NX9600 with an ATI Mobility Radeon X300 video
card, running WinXP. The additional monitor is an HP1740.
Following the directions for the HP1740, I plugged it into the laptop,
selected "extend desktop onto this monitor" in the display settings, and set
the resolution to 1280x768. It works well except that the display on the
HP1740 seems to be stuck in "wide-screen" format. There are 2-inch black
strips at the top and bottom of the screen, just as if I was watching a DVD
movie in wide screen format.
I've tried all the monitor's configuration buttons and also fiddling
with the display settings and nothing changes this. Can anybody clue me in on
why this is happening? My (clueless) guess is that since the laptop screen is
rectangular, it's trying to make the HP1740 screen the same dimensions. I
*really* need the display to fill the monitor fully.
(I tried calling HP support and the nice Indian lady took all my info
and then hung up on me. I wasn't even rude to her. She might have put me on
hold, but after 10 minutes of pure silence on the line, I figured she hung up.
I don't know why I bothered.)

Sharon
 
One of our customers recently bought a bunch of laptops and flat panel
monitors for an upcoming project. I just popped one laptop and monitor out of
the boxes and am trying to configure it for him. Our software works best on a
dual-video configuration, so this is why we're configuring them this way. This
is my first time working with dual-video on a laptop, so I could be doing
something silly.
The laptop is a Compaq NX9600 with an ATI Mobility Radeon X300 video
card, running WinXP. The additional monitor is an HP1740.
Following the directions for the HP1740, I plugged it into the laptop,
selected "extend desktop onto this monitor" in the display settings, and set
the resolution to 1280x768. It works well except that the display on the
HP1740 seems to be stuck in "wide-screen" format. There are 2-inch black
strips at the top and bottom of the screen, just as if I was watching a DVD
movie in wide screen format.
I've tried all the monitor's configuration buttons and also fiddling
with the display settings and nothing changes this. Can anybody clue me in on
why this is happening? My (clueless) guess is that since the laptop screen is
rectangular, it's trying to make the HP1740 screen the same dimensions. I
*really* need the display to fill the monitor fully.
(I tried calling HP support and the nice Indian lady took all my info
and then hung up on me. I wasn't even rude to her. She might have put me on
hold, but after 10 minutes of pure silence on the line, I figured she hung up.
I don't know why I bothered.)

Sharon
Click to expand...

The display on the Laptop is showing the black strips because it has a
fixed number of pixels 1280x 1024 and your resolution of 1280x768 is
not using the ones at top and bottom.
 
On 23 Jun 2005 15:29:29 -0500, (e-mail address removed) (Lurker at
Large) wrote:

The display on the Laptop is showing the black strips because it has a
fixed number of pixels 1280x 1024 and your resolution of 1280x768 is
not using the ones at top and bottom.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I should have been more clear. The laptop display is fine. It's the
additional monitor that has the widw-screen appearance. It's set the the
resolution recommended by that monitor documentation, too. So I was wondering
if the laptop or the video card was overriding it's normal function somehow.

BTW, one additional item, kind of a tangent. The first monitor I tried,
exactly like the current one, started out ok. As soon as I configured it to
specs and pressed the "Auto" button on the monitor like the manual said to, the
display shifted over to the right about 3 inches. I tried setting it back to
factory defaults and fiddling with the horizontal adjustments and nothing's
working. I suspect it's a bad monitor. This is the one I actually called HP
non-support about because I KNOW this isn't normal behavior. Of course I need
to call HP non-support repeatedly until they respond, but I'm curious if
anyone else has seen this problem with new flat panel monitors. I've only ever
seen it on old CRT's after they've lived long 15-year lifespans and their parts
start wearing out.

Sharon
 
The display on the Laptop is showing the black strips because it has a
fixed number of pixels 1280x 1024 and your resolution of 1280x768 is
not using the ones at top and bottom.
Click to expand...

Forgive me for responding again. I also wanted to clarify that if this
is an unfixable problem, i.e. the monitor is going to work this way because of
the video card or laptop enforcing some size limitation on it, that's what I
need to tell the customer. It's just not going to be acceptable to tell them
"I dunno why it does that. Couldn't fix it, haveaniceday."
Our customers are used to using the full-screen on their monitors so
this will strike them as really hokey. Of course up until now we've used
dual-video only on desktop machines, not laptops, so it's all new. But we try
to be a professional outfit, so I need to try my very best to make it work like
they expect or have a good technical reason why it won't.

Thanks!
Sharon
 
Lurker said:
Sorry, I should have been more clear. The laptop display is fine. It's
the
additional monitor that has the widw-screen appearance. It's set the the
resolution recommended by that monitor documentation, too. So I was
wondering if the laptop or the video card was overriding it's normal
function somehow.

BTW, one additional item, kind of a tangent. The first monitor I tried,
exactly like the current one, started out ok. As soon as I configured it
to specs and pressed the "Auto" button on the monitor like the manual said
to, the
display shifted over to the right about 3 inches. I tried setting it back
to factory defaults and fiddling with the horizontal adjustments and
nothing's
working. I suspect it's a bad monitor. This is the one I actually called
HP
non-support about because I KNOW this isn't normal behavior. Of course I
need to call HP non-support repeatedly until they respond, but I'm curious
if
anyone else has seen this problem with new flat panel monitors. I've only
ever seen it on old CRT's after they've lived long 15-year lifespans and
their parts start wearing out.
Click to expand...

You _should_ be able to set the display resolutions independently when using
an extended desktop. If you can't, the computer manufacturer may have
crippled the drivers--they often do this on laptops for some reason.

As a quick and dirty test, wipe one of the machines and do a clean
installation of the OS from a generic OEM CD (if there is a license code on
the machine plug it in instead of the one that came with the CD) and then
install the Omega drivers <http://www.omegadrivers.net/> (not the ATI
drivers--ATI has support for the Mobility chips turned off--Omega turns it
back on) and see if you get some settings that weren't present in the
factory installation. If so then you know it's a driver problem and you
can then address it either by deploying the Omega drivers or by searching
<http://www.rage3d.com> for information on enabling Mobility support on the
ATI factory drivers.

You might also need to obtain a copy of Powerstrip
<http://www.entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm> to adjust the timings to make
your monitors happy. ATI used to provide a simple, convenient tool for
adjusting the centering and sizing, but they removed that from their
drivers years ago--Powerstrip essentially is a more capable but less
convenient version of that utility.
 
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