On screen display only shows a dot?

[wohali]

System details: T60, Vista 32-bit. Have uninstalled then reinstalled: System Interface Driver v1.01.0805, ACPI Power Management v1.51, Power Manager v2.37, Hotkey Utility v2.09.0002, ATI Radeon/FireGL v8.383.1.1-070621a-049739C, Presentation Director v4.01.

Recently (3 months?) my On-Screen Display doesn't show anything on screen for volume/brightness/thinklight changes except a very small grey 2x2 pixel square at the bottom of the screen. The square appears for the same amount of time that the old volume/brightness bar graph or icon used to display.

I tried changing the OSD settings, toggling on/off, different font, different color, etc. via the Personalize > Display Settings > Advanced > OSD tab, but no luck.

I noticed that every time I bring back up the OSD tab, though, the Size pulldown is blanked out. I can select Small, Medium or Large from the pulldown, but after I press OK and reopen the dialog, the field is blanked again. Could this be a clue?

Other OSD applications (Wireless FN+F5, Presentation Manager FN+F7, etc.) all work just fine, as does the hotkey functionality. I'm running the latest versions of everything. Is there a known issue with the latest versions of any of the drivers?

[RonS]

Press the middle button over the trackpad. The dot should go away. You probably need to set up the ultranav/trackpad driver in mouse properties.

[wohali]

No go - I have that driver installed and use the middle button very, very frequently as a scroll button. Works great.

Other ideas?

[Marin85]

Change the video driver or try to rereinstall OSD resp. update it

[tporter]

Same problem...
T61, XP SP3 fresh install. All drivers & apps are latest version from lenovo.

[mixz1]

This appears to be an onging problem. Using the Advanced Display Properties to modify your OSD results in a FUBAR OSD. If you are comfortable editing the registry, go to the Advanced Tab on the Display Properties and un-check OSD settings.

Then go to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IBM\TPHOTKEY\OnScreenDisplay] and modify the following keys:

"FadeoutTime"=dword:000003e8
"Color"=dword:00ff0000
"CustomColors"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"Size"=hex:14,1e,28,14
"Font"="Tahoma"
"Enable"=dword:00000001

This will give you a deep blue OSD with about a 3/4 second timeout. Lacking Tahoma, you could use Arial.

DO NOT use the Advanced Properties Dialog again or you'll be back to square one.

[tporter]

mixz1 Big thanks, that really works after reboot!

[yak]

Interesting.

As I have Vista which lacks the OSD settings found in XP, I gave it a try and set one of those registry key values. By default the "OnScreenDisplay" key was just empty. I've set the Color to the dword:00ff0000 and TADA, after a reboot my OSD is blue.

Not that I have anything against the default look of the OSD but it would be good to be able to easily edit these settings in Vista and Lenovo seems to have it on low priority. Knowing that the registry keys work, one would just have to find a way to apply the settings without a reboot. Writing a properties dialog would then be quite easy for most programmers.

Just a side thought.

[FrankL]

I get the dot too after applying the OSD in the advanced display properties (T43 running Vista). Looking at above mentioned registry key I found that the 'size' entry was set to 0. After entering the value suggested above for size, it now works fine.

I suppose I can change all parameters to my liking in the OSD tab, as long as I manually set the size properly in the registry afterwards.

[mappoint]

Same problem here with two ThinkPads. T60 (Type 2008) and T400 (Type 2768) both with Vista Business 32-bit. Did anyone get a response from Lenovo so far?

Tom

[Jody L]

Hey mixz1 can you elaborate a little on how to set the color? I build all of our Lenovo images from scratch and this issue is a first for me. I'm having it on an X301 image I'm working on. I was able to fix it with your reg edits. I prepped the default profile again and the reg edits carried over thankfully. I was hoping to change it to the default green color.

I checked my T500 image and the OnScreenDisplay folder is empty but the OSD works fine.

[mappoint]

default color is: ff00

(reg key color reg_dword)

Regards

Tom

[mixz1]

Hey mixz1 can you elaborate a little on how to set the color? I build all of our Lenovo images from scratch and this issue is a first for me. I'm having it on an X301 image I'm working on. I was able to fix it with your reg edits. I prepped the default profile again and the reg edits carried over thankfully. I was hoping to change it to the default green color.

I checked my T500 image and the OnScreenDisplay folder is empty but the OSD works fine.

Sorry to get back to you so late. I've been away for awhile. Mappoint got it exactly right: ff00

[Jody L]

Awesome guys thanks.

[Comage]

Thank you very much mixz1. You just saved me the thought of re-installing Vista just for this crappy bug!

[wohali]

The tip works! Thank you so much for the trip, mixz1. I didn't feel like digging through the Registry to find the settings. I wonder if Lenovo will ever fix this...they're still releasing fixes for the Hotkey utilities, it seems!

[Jakubisko]

This register-editing tip really works also on my X60s
Thanks