T60 - widescreen ext. monitor issues (X2Gen)

[Snoogins]

Hello:

I have a T60 from back in Aug. '06, with the ATI x1400 card in it, and I just hooked up a 22" widescreen monitor to it today, and am having an issue.

I'm fairly sure this is an issue with the monitor, so I'm hoping someone else out there has seen this before.

The monitor is an X2Gen MW22U, which is supposed to have a native resolution of 1680x1050, if I'm reading it right. I've installed the latest ATI driver updates from Lenovo's site, including the Catalyst software. I have the T60 docked, and the monitor hooked up to the dock via VGA.

My issue is - when I set the screen resolution in XP to 1680x1050, the monitor itself doesn't switch to that resolution. According to the monitor's own OSD menu, it is at 1440x900, so the desktop ends up being bigger than the screen, and it pans. The manual for the monitor is pretty awful, but it lists all the preset modes, and 1680x1050 is definitely there. Am I doing something wrong? I tried using the OSD menu to manually set the resolution, and it doesn't look like I have the ability to do it. I've also tried setting the resolution in both the "normal" Control Panel, as well as through Catalyst, and it doesn't seem to matter.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance...

[creed_mty]

I have exactly the same monitor as you! and i dont have any problem!

you need first plug the vga port of your laptop BEFORE you turn it on!

when you turned on go to the display properties>settings tab>and select the native resolution of the exernal monitor and click ok.

then, push the "automatic adjustment" ( I think is the KEY of your issue) of your screen at the bottom and should be done .

now, turn your computer off and unplug the vga port and turn it back on and your external monitor automatically show as the second monitor well that's the way i did it! i hope it helps!!


remember there is nothing to do with the radeon or video drivers !!! i did not touch it for my monitor adjusment!

[Snoogins]

Thanks for the reply!!

It turns out that I just resolved the problem myself recently. I had a slightly different experience than you, so I don't know what the difference would be.

I did have everything plugged in before powering up the first time w/the new monitor. In my case, I stumbled upon a setting in the Catalyst Control Center that fixed my problem.

In the Advanced View, under "Monitor Properies 0/Attributes", there was an option checked in the "Monitor Attributes" section labelled "Use Ectended Display Identification Data (EDID) or driver defaults". When this was checked, the drop-down lists for "Maximum Resolution" and "Maximum refresh rate" were greyed out, but I could see that the values were 1440x900 and 60 Hz, so I unchecked the option, and was then able to set those values manually. I set them to 1680x1050 and 75Hz, and then changed my desktop settings again in the Control Panel to match (actually, the monitor can only do 60 Hz at that resolution, so I set it to 1680x1050-60). Regardless, that did the trick, and my display looks much better now!

I still think that this is an underlying issue w/the monitor, since it just uses the standard PnP monitor driver. I'm guessing that the ATI software is querying the monitor for this information, and it's not returning the correct values. I might be wrong, though...