Please Help: Infuriating Problem

Hello, this is my first post here and I hope i've created it in the correct part of the forum, if i've not and your a mod please feel free to move it.

Ok, the problem, I bought a "Nvidea Gainward 9600 GT PCX 2 Golden Sample 512mb" Graphics Card which has 2 DVI out ports on the back of it, I have 2 working DVI to DVI cables and i now have 2 identical "Acer V223W LCD" Monitors. So being someone naive i connect the cables with the monitors and graphics card and turn my system on and go to "Control Panel > Display > Screen Resolution" and hit Detect quite happily thinking that was all there was too it....

My Primary screen 1 is coming up in the Display dropdown as it should: "1. Acer V223W" yet my secondary display would not appear at all. I attempted to use my Nvidea Control Panel to no avail, I updated all my drivers and still nothing.

Thinking that there maybe a physical problem i swap everything around and sure enough both monitors and cables work, but only if they are in the top (Primary) DVI port on the graphics card, so thinking there may be a problem with the lower (secondary) DVI port and wanting to try everything, I, in a moment of madness, plugged in a DVI to VGA adapter and connected the 2nd monitor with a VGA cable and hey presto, dual monitors!!

The problem i have is one, why the hell isnt windows 7s recognising my 2nd monitor unless its plugged in with a VGA cable and even then still not correctly recognising it (in the Screen Resolution screen the display drop down reads 1. Acer V223W and 2. Display device on: VGA). And two, its not letting me set the 2nd monitor as the same resolution as the first so the quality of the 2nd is out and all the text looks distorted (Monitor 1: 1680 x 1050 (recommended) Monitor 2: 1600 x 1024)

Sorry for the long post but i wanted to get in all the details rather than make you good people respond with answers that I have found through trial and error to be incorrect.

Thanks in advance

Brodie

Why do you jump to the conclusion that it is W7's fault that the second monitor isn't being detected. If I understood what you said, there is output on one video card connector, but not the other. Sounds to me that it is a defective video card. Do you have known good card that you could swap out for a check?

seekermeister said:

Why do you jump to the conclusion that it is W7's fault that the second monitor isn't being detected. If I understood what you said, there is output on one video card connector, but not the other. Sounds to me that it is a defective video card. Do you have known good card that you could swap out for a check?

Im assuming the lower (secondary) DVI port on the graphics card works because when i stick a DVI to VGA converter and connect the 2nd monitor to it using a VGA cable it works, albeit with a lower resolution to the primary DVI connected monitor.
Cheers for the quick reply though

Thorsen said:

so thinking there may be a problem with the lower (secondary) DVI port and wanting to try everything, I, in a moment of madness, plugged in a DVI to VGA adapter and connected the 2nd monitor with a VGA cable and hey presto, dual monitors!!

Can you try just hooking one monitor up to the lower DVI port and going DVI to DVI to make sure that the lower port is actually working properly.

Edit: also when you test each monitor, do you see the name of the monitor in the drop down list. One of the monitors might not have drivers installed/attached to it.

When i use the lower DVI port on the Graphics card on its own i get nothing, but this im led to belive it correct, as the top DVI port on the card is the primary one, and plugging anything into the secondary one without a primary connected will not work.

As for the name, no in the win7 display screen it shows:

1. Acer V223W
2. Display device on: VGA

or if I attempt to connect the 2nd monitor via the DVI cable win7 does not see it at all and only provides me with the option to "try to connect anyway on: VGA" when i attempt to detect the 2nd monitor.

Ive updated my graphics card driver, im using:

Driver Date: 03/04/2010
Driver Version: 8.17.11.9745

However, and Im not sure if this is an issue, looking at the device manager its showing my Display Adapter as "NVIDEA GeForce 9600 GT"
Doing an image search on Google for that card it brings up a totally different card. The card i have is a: "Gainward BLISS 9600GT Golden Sample"
More info on it here

In that article it states that the "BLISS 9600GT uses the NVIDEA GeForce 9600GT graphics chip" So can I presume I have the correct display drivers!?

It also states the following:

"The World’s first graphics card supports DisplayPort, HDMI, Dual-Link DVI-I, and CRT outputs
BLISS 9600GT golden sample supports the most advanced DisplayPort and HDMI output whose resolution can be up to 2560*1600 and 1920*1080. Furthermore, the mainstream Dual-Link DVI-I and CRT (via the DVI-to-D-Sub dongle) is supported in BLISS 9600GT golden sample. BLISS 9600GT golden sample is HDCP compliant and supports NVIDIA PureVideo HD and H.264 decode. You can choose either DisplayPort or HDMI output to connect to the monitor, and then you can start to enjoy the ultimate Blu-ray and HD-DVD movie experience."


hope this helps