Video Card Tech Support Needed
Submitted by Midnight on Tue, 08/07/2007 - 10:18am.
Situation:
I am running a home theater PC with Vista and a MSI 8500GT. Output is via DVI and a DVI/HDMI adapter through an HDMI input on the TV.
I have set Media Center to start when Windows starts. I was tweaking my setup and needed to resize the desktop for underscan compensation. I closed Media Center and went to the Nvidia control panel and choose "resize desktop." Contrary to what I have read other places, it actually worked while I was resizing, then the screen blinked and now the bottom 90% of my desktop is black. All I can see is a 1" sliver across the top of the screen. When I reboot and Media Center starts, Media Center looks fine, but if I close it then I get the same desktop (black with a 1" viewable strip at the top). Boot screen also looks fine, but I do not get the Vista symbol in the center of screen (it's in the portion that is blacked out)
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the latest Nvidia drivers with no luck. My guess is that Media Center always displays in the resolution I set it to (1080p) regardless of the desktop, so when I close Media Center I'm left with a desktop resolution that doesn't make any sense to the TV.
I can take the HTPC into my office and connect it to my 22" monitor at 1680x1050 and get the full desktop with no problems. It appears the resize desktop option has just screwed up the way the desktop transmits 1920x1080. How can I fix this short of a Vista reinstall? I have a lot of time in my software setup that I don't want to lose.
Thanks for anything anyone can suggest.
The 1" strip: do you think it's 1080 minus 1050 pixels high? Just a hunch.
If you fired up a DirectX video game, the game would probably resize to some resolution and display on your screen - especially if you set that res to 1920 x 1080.
I bet that the resolution of the desktop isn't set to 1980 x 1080. Didn't you have a problem with the 360 displaying when you first hooked it up to the TV? It was a resolution issue.
Yes, the TV would only accept 1920x1080 via VGA. Tried 1366x768 with no picture. The 1080-1050 idea is pretty sound, but I still don't understand why it would display that.
The catch 22 is that I can't view enough of the desktop to adjust the resolution. Perhaps a full video card reinstall will fix it. If not, I'll do the dual monitor setup and try adjusting it that way.
Uninstalled drivers again, but this time I removed a couple nv*.* files from the system32 folder and then restarted without the video card. Reinstalled video card, restarted, and didn't touch the resolution (defaulted to 800x600). Disconnected from 22" monitor, reconnected to HDTV, got my 800x600 desktop on screen. Adjusted resolution to 1920x1080 @ 60Hz. Used "resize my HDTV desktop" option to compensate for underscan. Looks and works great now. Hallelujah. Holy shit. Where's the Tylenol?
I just picked up a bottle of 225 recently, feel free to use a few!
DJ
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