stuck @ 60hz on my monitor !

pepiman

Alrighty my eyes are officially killing me.
I'm writting this quickly because since I've installed the ATI 7.12 drivers I haven't spent more than 20 minutes on the computer a day


Scenario
Check my specs
I was running 7.10 for vista x64
Everything was great with 1280x1024 @ 75hz

I update to 7.12 (uninstalled 7.10 first obviously)
Since then, I'm stuck at 60hz
The only way to get to 75hz is to bring the resolution down to 1024x768 or lower.
I could do that, but with a good video card and good monitor... what the hell for ?!?!?


So I've tried uninstalling all ATI/LG monitor drivers
Reinstall 7.10
Install 7.11
etc... etc... but nothing works anymore.



Has ANYONE got a solution please? Save me! I'm about to throw my monitor and video card out the damn window.



*Happy Holidays*

Judas

If this is LCD monitor..

i'm completely confused as a HZ/refresh rate doesn't work at all the same way a CRT does..

if it's CRT... see if you can use a refresh rate forcing program... or use the CCC's FORCED refresh rate settings...

if it's lcd.... something is wrong with the display.... as no headaches should be had due to refresh rate.. considering that a lcd doesn't really "have" a refresh rate

pepiman

Sig says LCD
it's a 19" LCD
I've had it at 75hz for a year now (since I bought it)
but since I changed the ATI drivers, all settings are stuck at 60hz

it's all in my original post

ChaosMinionX

This is a driver issue, that monitor is rated 1280x1024/75hz.....

Reinstall, and use driver cleaner in safemode and see if that changes anything.

Judas

pepiman, i'm just making sure.... because the way LCD technologies work, completely eliminates all forms of flicker essentially... considering the LCD itself makes smooth transitions from one color/shade to another.... reguardless of the refresh rate....

Only the higher MS responce time (16ms or more) had a slight tendancy to cause nausia and headaches for very few people...


Now as far as i'm aware, the DVI connection in use only allows for a true 60hz... where as connected via analog will allow 75hz.... In rare occasions, i've seen some monitors make 75hz selectable via dvi.. however, in the monitors own properties, the frequency was still 60hz....

I'd be thoroughly interested in getting my hands on that monitor to see what may be causing headaches.

CDsDontBurn

i agree w/judas on this one. i don't understand how on an LCD monitor, going from 75Hz to 60Hz would make any difference to you as the "refresh" rate of an LCD monitor is set by the heating and coolin gof the crystals inside your display just as Judas had said.

pepiman

full uninstalls solve nothing it seems...

i dunno what file/setting the ATI drivers left behind but they are bugging me

The_Neon_Cowboy

monitor drivers installed?

Tipstaff

Alrighty.. here's a doozie of a post.

This is actually not video driver related as far as I can tell as I've had the same problem whether it be an Nvidia card or an ATI/AMD card (I have both hooked up to this monitor). From what I can tell it's more a conflicting range of supported frequencies listed in your monitors inf file to that listed by the video drivers. Most manufacturers will put out a blanket inf file for a line of monitors (edit: or they will include a wide range of resolutions to support every resolution known to man.. or woman), yet somehow things just screw up. In my case my original driver that came with my monitor supported up to 75Hz @ 1280x1024, yet subsequent Viewsonic drivers limited that frequency to 70Hz even though the driver has a listing for 85Hz.

As I said, the problem comes from the fact that manufacturers put in a broad range of frequencies, sometimes 2, in fact. In my new drivers the range was from 30Hz to 82Hz, and a range from 50Hz to 85Hz. I don't know why it messes up, since my support frequency is in both of those ranges, but it does mess up. Unfortunatly you may never be able to reconcile this completely, but you can hack the registry to override the problem. It'll take a little registry work, and since every install of Windows is based on each persons install I can't just say "Go here", or give you a patch to fix it, so you will have to do this yourself.

Anyways, here's what you do (complete with pictures):

- Open up regedit (Start, Run, regedit).
- Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then SYSTEM, CurrentControlSet, Class, Control.

Now the fun part. Inside here you will see folder after folder with names that are in long alpha numeric form. Each one represents a device installed in your machine, and the default settings they support, including one for your monitor. The problem is that most times these folders are labeled based on your install, so each persons folder listing will be different. What you have to do is simply click on one listing, and in the window on the right side it will tell you what it is for. Just go through each one until you see a listing for "Monitors" (sometimes the listing can be right after the one for Modems).



Once you find it, highlight it, go up to the menu at the top, select "File", "Export", and save it to your desktop under a recognizable name. This is a backup of the settings in there just in case something horribly goes wrong.

Now, open that listing up, and you will see a bunch of folders with 4 digits (sometimes one or 2, sometimes quite more). Each one represents an installation of a new monitor type that you have used at one point, be it a default monitor, plug and play, maybe one for each monitor driver you tried for your panel that had different release dates for the driver, or you tried unsigned drivers, and switched to signed drivers, even one for a television if you did TV output. Click on each listing, starting from 0000, working your way down to the last one (in my case 0007). On the right side you should see information about that listing. The thing you need to pay attention to is the one called "DriverDesc", and the monitors name to the right of it.



Now, the catch is that you will find more than one of these folders has the same listing for your specific monitor, the problem is that you don't know which one Windows is using (it's usually the last one that has your monitor listed in it), so the best thing to do is edit all of the ones that have your monitors listing in it (the reason is that if you clean out your drivers Windows will reload your monitor drivers once you reboot, and it may pick one of the other listings). So, here's what we do: as you can see in the above picture you should see 2 sub folders within each 0000 listing (sometimes not as in the case of the "Default" monitor): one for MODES, and one for the maxium resolution that the monitor supports according to the driver that was installed. Click on the last folder (in the above sample its 1280x1024), and take note of the window on the right side.



As you can see above the listing for "Mode1" says "30-82, 50-85,+,+". It may be a little different, or it may be the same, however with what we are going to do it won't matter. All you need to remember is that this is the frequencies your monitors drivers says your monitor supports. What we are going to do tighten the frequencies up. So, double click on the "Mode1" listing on the right side, and a new window will pop up.



In my case I've chosen 60-85Hz as this is the specs for my monitor (based upon my monitors inf, at lower resolutions my max is 85hz), and most monitors in fact, however you should find out what your minimum and maximum resolutions are, and use those instead. Once you've put in your settings, hit the "OK" button, and you should see something like this:



As I mentioned before you may have more than one listing for your monitor (I have 3), so it's best to edit them all just like you did with this one. Don't forget: if something messes up just open up regedit, and import that registry file you created, or right-click that registry file, and import the settings.

Now, we don't need to reboot the machine to find out if this worked (and frankly it's best we don't until we set things the way we want). So, open up Display Properties, go to the Settings tab, and change resolutions (doesn't matter what... say.. 800x600). Apply the setting, hit Yes to keeping this resolution, then change it back to your maximum, and again, hit yes. Now open up the monitor refresh page by hitting the Advanced button, and under the Monitor tab you should now see the proper listings for supported refresh rates.

Before:



After:



It should be noted that you may need to widen the supported rates a bit to get the rate you want to show up, however do not go below 56Hz as your minimum, or 120Hz as your maximum unless you absolutely need to. As I mentioned before, find out what your minimum and maximum rates are, and use those. If you put in rates beyond your specs sometimes the in between ones will show up in the list (if I put in 120Hz as my max 100Hz shows up, but not 120Hz), and if you choose them you could damage your display.

(update: edited for corrections 01-01-08)

Dyre Straits

Excellent post, Tipstaff!

(Just a note from me, though, when I'm editing my Registry, I use the Edit/Find feature to find the device listing/s.)

Tipstaff

I should point something out. I should have said that it doesn't look to be AS MUCH a video driver problem as it is a monitor driver problem, but there is a link there. Having 2 rigs with 2 different brands of cards (one with ATI, the other Nvidia) affords me the ability to easily compare results, especially since both rigs are hooked up to this one monitor. Thing is that I see the exact same thing on both rigs, with one minor difference.

For instance, all of the above I mentioned is my experience on my main rig, the one running the X800XT AGP card, and it’s hooked up via VGA. Going over to the gaming rig, which has the 8800GT, if I hook it up using VGA as well I see exactly the same results with a slight difference, and that is I also have 72Hz as an option, where as on the ATI side I had 60 and 70Hz (and this doesn't matter if I use VGA or DVI). If I hook up the 8800GT via DVI (which it normally is) my only option is 60Hz. After I do the hack I mentioned, no matter what connection I use, 75Hz appears.

Anyways, all of this is based on my experience trying to figure out how to fix this issue, but as I said, to me it seems to be more a problem with the monitor driver since I get nearly the same results no matter what video card I use. Hell... I had this exact same problem with my X1950Pros before this, and the results were identical to the X800XTs results. I do have to admit, the 8800GTs inclusion of a frequency that the ATI card doesn’t have using the same connector type does hint that there is a link between the video drivers and the monitor drivers, though what that is I can't be sure of exactly. Could be RAMDAC related, could be monitor driver related.


‘Course, there is the old standby culprit: it could be Windows' fault.

pepiman

Thanks for all the info TipStaff
I tried exactly what you wrote and it had no effect

Here's the lines from my INF file that are weird


[L1970HR_Analog.AddReg]
HKR,"MODES\1280,1024",Mode1,,"30.0-83.0,56.0-75.0,+,+"
HKR,,PreferredMode,,"1280,1024,60"
HKR,,ICMprofile,0,"L1970HR.ICM"

[L1970HR_Digital.AddReg]
HKR,"MODES\1280,1024",Mode1,,"30.0-71.0,56.0-75.0,+,+"
HKR,,PreferredMode,,"1280,1024,60"
HKR,,ICMprofile,0,"L1970HR.ICM"

Preferred Mode @ 60... every single spec I've seen of my monitor states SEVENTY FIVE ... this is driving me bonkers

I only have 1 folder in my reg file (0000) and the mode was listed as in the INF file. I changed it to 60-85, changed res, no effect (I can still only choose 60hz)
Rebooted, tried all sorts of modifications to your info and still nothing... I just don't get what it could be.

All I know is before upgrading ATI drivers from 7.10 to 7.12, everything was fine
Since then, no matter what downgrade/upgrade I do, I can't hit over 60hz at 1280x1024

The only way to hit 75hz is at 800x600 or 1024x768

Tipstaff

Crap. I'm such an idiot. I just realized you are using Vista x64. While that section might still show up there in Vista it may not be active (more for 32bit support). I'll have to try this on my system at work tomorrow as I don't have a Vista system (32bit or 64bit) here to confirm this.

In the meantime, there are 3 other things to try:


1) While XP used the “CurrentControlSet” listing it can also use 1 of 3 other places, or more to the point it can import the listing into 1 of 3 other places, and use them instead (Vista should be the same). When you went into the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System” section you also saw 3 other “ControlSet” folders: ControlSet001, ControlSet002, and ControlSet003. Just as with the “CurrentControlSet” section these 3 are setup the same way. Because I can’t confirm what Vista uses at the moment I would advise also changing the same location within those 3 “ControlSet” listings too (if they are there, that is). Once you make those changes, adjust the resolution, and what not like I mentioned earlier, and see if the frequency shows up.


!!Remember to first backup those sections before you alter them, just in case.

2) Before I figured this way of getting it to work for myself I had been using another way to get that 75Hz listing back, and that was to choose a Plug and Play monitor (in Vistas case it should be a Generic PnP Monitor). It sucked to have to use that listing as I would lose access to my monitors color ICM file (used for printing), but it worked, at least for me that is, and unfortunately, under XP, so I'm not sure if the same will work under Vista.

3) This next one is going to be a bit tricky, but it may be worth it. Within the Windows folder is a folder called “Inf”. Within this folder is where all drivers config files are stored for devices (among other things), if they have one. In the case of monitor drivers the inf is stored in here as an “OEM” file. Problem is, a lot of other drivers inf files get renamed to this too, such as sound cards, modems, and so fourth, so you may have quite a few of them in there (in my case, 56 oem inf files). They will be listed in order from oem1.inf until the last one (such as oem56.inf). Finding the one you need is pretty easy as the “Monitors” section I had you go to before will tell you exactly which oem.inf file it’s using. Just open up one of the 0000 listings, and take note of the oem.inf file associated with it. Once you do, go into the Windows\inf folder, and delete both the oem.inf file associated with that monitor, as well as the oem.pnf file with the same oemx number.

After that’s done, go to each ControlSet000\Control\Class and CurrentControlSet\Control\Class section, find the monitor section, and delete all the 0000 listings in each. DO NOT delete the alpha numeric listing though! Only delete the 0000 listings.

Next, change your monitor type to a Plug and Play one (or Generic PnP Monitor). Best way would be through Device Manager, or via Control Panel, Personalize, Display Settings. Just update the driver for your monitor, choose to “Browse my computer….”, choose “Let me pick from a list…”, and pick to install the Plug and Play (or Generic PnP) monitor (you should note that your monitor will no longer show up as a possible choice). After that, reboot the machine.

Before you reinstall your monitors driver, first open up the inf file for your monitor driver, and remove the line that says, “HKR,,PreferredMode,,"1280,1024,60"”, or preferably, alter it to say 75 instead of 60, and then reinstall your monitor driver. If I remember correctly LGs driver has 2 folders for each monitor: one with a driver, and then sub a folder called “Driver” within it that has the exact same driver in it. You will want to alter the inf file in both folders just in case. After that try changing the resolutions, back and fourth, then see if the frequency appears. If it doesn’t appear, try going through the steps I mentioned in my earlier posting. This time, however, you might see that the first listing is 0001, and not 0000 now, so don't worry about it. After all that see if the frequency shows up.