Force DVI/HDMI resolutions and refresh rates

baarod said:

Thanks. After all the research I did to come up with this guide I got mostly complaints. As a result I left this site and have only recently come back. I've also seen many of my techniques used for driver issues and such so I'm happy to have helped. I think Windows 7 is off and on it's way so thanks for all the fish!

Aw, I'm sorry to hear that it got you so much grief from other users! I have nothing but gratitude, as this is exactly what I was looking for. I'm so glad you posted it!

Your fix is very clever, in my opinion. I'd considered picking a different monitor driver, but nothing in the list of Microsoft-provided drivers seemed helpful. I like how your method gets me a new driver that's specifically tailored for my display (since it is based off the display's original EDID). You managed to turn a very complicated job into a relatively simple set of instructions.


I have to give Microsoft a wag of my finger for being so strict about resolution and refresh rate selection. There's a checkbox in the control panel for hiding modes that are not supported, but it doesn't seem to allow anything more when you uncheck it! And do they really think a display that takes 75Hz won't take 60Hz? If their solution panned out perfectly, and nobody ever got out-of-scan errors, I might forgive them -- but my friend had problems with an old LCD because it was reporting 56Hz support that it didn't actually have. (Hey, your fix might help him too!)

is this applicable to laptops? just wondering

thanks

baarod said:

kitji said:

is this applicable to laptops? just wondering

Typically, no. Laptops displays are usually hard wired to the video subsystem and as such the EDID interaction is bypassed. Some "kit" machines expose an EDID but that's a distinct minority.

I would have to say "that's not always true either"...it's a hit or miss scenario, but it all depends on the problem you are having. If you upgraded software, as I did, and lost resolutions because they are not native to your new OS, this fix works fine. If you are trying to get a resolution that your physical display cannot support, it won't work...

My advice is to give it a try (if it's something you used to have available) and let other people know if it worked.

Feel free to check my other posts to see what problem I had. This solution worked just fine for me.

Sig

Thanks ! Baarod , thanks thanks thanks thanks so much for this help/fix

I am running a 19" Gigabyte CRT and i followed your instructions on page 1 point for point - it worked perfectly and allowed me to go back to my WinXP Settings 100Hz/110Hz or 120Hz as i wish. ( I am running the 196.21 NVIDIA Drivers 8800GTX)

I ran those drivers on WinXP Pro and now on Win 7 !

1 PROBLEM tho ?

It only allows me to runn them in 16 bit - whenever i try 32 bit it goes directly to 256 colors ?

Anyone know what the problem or solution is ?

Hi there,
First of all, and upfront, thanks for all your help - I have read quite a bit of the thread and you clearly show that you care!

Second, sorry for a rather large post. I have a situation with a KVM that is connected to 2 computers. One of them, a laptop, has Win 7 installed, the other one is a home built system and has Server 2008 and XP on dual boot. My monitor (that acts as a second monitor for my laptop) is an HP 2335, with 1920x1200 native res.

Now this is the fun stuff: when I connect the monitor to XP, 7 or 2008 directly I can get the 1920x1200 resolution. But when I connect it through the KVM switch, I can get 1920x1200 only with XP; both Win 7 and Server 2008 do not detect the right resolutions for the monitor, and give me modes, including 1920x1440 that are not supported. I have to resort to 1600x1200, which is really bad because the screen looks all fuzzy.

After reading your post I thought I had the solution. I have not tried it yet in the server, but with laptop on Win 7, when I use Phoenix, I get 2 results for the EDID, one of them for the HP monitor and the other something called BOE089B that seems to have nothing relevant on it (standard timings are all disabled and block content for detailed timings are all ASCII string type.)

I have assumed that the HP EDID is the one from the monitor when it is connected directly, and the BOE089B is the one from the KVM that seems like garbage - I bet the KVM does not transfer properly the EDID info.

I thought then that by using the HP monitor.inf file to replace the BOE089B EDID (that reads as VGA in screen resolution window) I would be able to set the proper resolutions. When I "update software" in device manager and choose the monitor.inf that I have created by exporting the HP EDID with Phoenix, the video system resets and I get back to the same place. Restarting does not change anything. The Device Manager now shows a EDID Override monitor, but Phoenix reading the registry keeps getting the same garbage info, although the name of the .inf file now reads EDID Override.

Do you knof if am I doing something wrong, or the laptop video card is not letting the EDID override work? When the video system resets, the laptop returns to a clone desktop approach instead of extended desktop configuration.

Anyway, any help appreciated. I will try next with the server OS and see if the above process works better at all.

Thank you for this tutorial! I have been fighting Windows 7 to get my KVM switch to work properly (using two monitors on a second computer and if the main monitor wasn't connected at boot time, I got a lame low-res default size, which Win 7 would not let me change). This worked great for me and I was able to avoid buying an EDID Ghost Emulator.