Can't get my Acer X223W (DVI+HDMI with Apple's adapter) widescreen monitor to show anything.

Hello.

I have a 3.5 years old Acer AM3800 desktop PC with 4 GB of RAM, an
onboard Intel G45/G43 Express chipset, etc. I have two big 20"+ LCD
monitors connected to this PC: Philip Brilliance 200P's VGA and
widescreen Acer X223W's Apple HDMI+DVI) connected. I cannot seem to get
the widescreen Acer X223W's Apple HDMI+DVI) monitor to show anything (no
video signal). I even disconnected its VGA cable, and still nothing!

I can see text modes (BIOS, boot from which drive, Windows' F8, Windows'
text boot loader, etc.) and Windows' graphical loaders, but nothing for
Window' login screen and desktops. Also, Windows PE do show up fine.
Safe mode's login and desktop do not show anything.

Am I missing something? Windows' Device Manager and display settings
doesn't seem to detect the widescreen monitor when I have both monitors
connected. I tried this widescreen monitor on Mac Mini (same adapter and
cables) and it was fine.

I tried both my original 64-bit Acer OEM Vista HPE SP2 (IE7), clean
Window 7 HPE SP1 clean upgrade, and new 64-bit W8 Pro. What's up? All
OSes were updated from Windows Updates.

Thank you in advance.
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I also tried a bootable KNOPPIX v6.0.4 CD, and it had no problems in its
desktop. Something is weird in Windows. :/

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Resolution set too high ?

On my monitor, if that happened I'd see "Out Of Range" on the OSD.

Another possibility, is the monitor has memorized an X,Y offset for
a particular resolution, that pushes the image all the way off the screen.
Your OSD has size and offset adjustments, and you'd hope they were not
capable of applying an offset so large, as to push the image completely
off the screen.

With whatever working hardware configuration you can put together, you
could dump the EDID and see if there is anything particularly weird
about the data. (EDID is used for Plug and Play info.) Some monitors,
apparently, don't write protect the EDID, so it's possible to overwrite
the contents of the EDID. I don't know if Windows has any way of logging
issues with that or not (EDID no longer makes sense).

When you say "both monitors connected", are you saying it works if you
test the monitors individually ? Or, that you have a monitor that
never works (except in low resolution situations, like the BIOS) ?

In Windows, you can use this to examine the EDID. I presume Linux
can do it as well, but I've never investigated the details. (Xrandr and
friends, are convenience tools for setting display properties, but I don't
know if something in that area, can dump an EDID in a reasonable way.)

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm

Wikipedia says there is a "read-edid" tool in Linux.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_display_identification_data

http://www.polypux.org/projects/read-edid/

The current resolution choice in Windows, is likely stored in the
Registry, but don't ask me how to find it. And removing a video
driver and reinstalling it again, doesn't clean out the registry.
So that won't work to improve matters either.

If you install an "lcd monitor driver", the most active thing that
does, is set the "maximum resolution" via a registry key. But not
all manufacturers of LCD screens, provide such a driver for download,
so you can't count on them. For example, Westinghouse brand LCD monitors,
never come with LCD monitor drivers. NEC monitors do. (Mine did.) My driver
was only 6KB in size, so they're not exactly drivers as such, rather
just adding an entry to the Registry, and providing color calibration
for things like Photoshop. At least one company, when you look for
their driver, they have a huge download with every monitor driver
stored in a single file. A monitor driver isn't strictly necessary,
but it's another variable to play with, when your setup isn't working
right.

Paul

 

I tried the lowest resolutions, but they didn't help.

It didn't matter if both were connected or only HDMI. VGA monitor always
work.

Anyways, I think I got it working. I needed to use Acer's updated video
driver from its web site. Using Intel's driver from intel.com and
original OEM driver did not fix the issue. Weird.
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