Gaa, vista is pissing me off

ponderingturtle

Orthogonal Vector
ponderingturtle
Joined
Jul 11, 2006
Messages
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I like to use my computer to watch programs and use it as a dvd player. But with my old computer dieing I got a new vista machine. How do you get it to recognise the s-video port and the monitor at the same time?

I am not sure if it is a vista issue or a ATI catalyst issue, the video card is a Radeon X1300pro.

If I unplug my monitor it shows on the tv, but I can not get it to recognise both the tv and monitor at the same time.

Any ideas?
 
First of all, make sure you download and install the latest drivers. As of writing, the latest is from Apr. 18, 2007.

Second of all, have you checked out all the options in the Display Settings? There is a button marked "Advanced Settings" that might give you options for setting up and activating multiple monitors and TV devices.
 
Wowbagger said:
First of all, make sure you download and install the latest drivers. As of writing, the latest is from Apr. 18, 2007.

Second of all, have you checked out all the options in the Display Settings? There is a button marked "Advanced Settings" that might give you options for setting up and activating multiple monitors and TV devices.
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I have tried these, I had updated drivers but not catalyst control center, but it did not help in seeing the TV when my monitor is connected.
 
All I know is that there are supposed to be buttons for turning on and off multiple monitors and TVs connected to the PC, in the Advanced tabs under Display Settings. If you can not see them, or if they don't work, then you are beyond my help. Sorry.
 
Wowbagger said:
All I know is that there are supposed to be buttons for turning on and off multiple monitors and TVs connected to the PC, in the Advanced tabs under Display Settings. If you can not see them, or if they don't work, then you are beyond my help. Sorry.
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It's ok. Yes there should be, but the problem is that it does not seem to want to see the TV if the monitor is plugged in. It sees it fine if only the TV is plugged in and shows up as tv settings, but that area disapears if the monitor is connected.

I am bringing my scan converter home from work so that will at least fix it in a hopefuly temperary and imperfect fashion.

I am just annoyed that it was so easy to do in XP and they are making it so much more difficult
 
To use multi-monitor on Vista, you need to set your second TV as a monitor and have it set to extend the current desktop.

This is done by right clicking the desktop (not on an icon), selecting "personalize" then "Display settings"

You can further drag the secondary monitor (the TV) to the bottom-right corner of the primary monitor so the mouse cursor wont disappear on you by accident.

My guess is that your current issue is that the second monitor is not desktop-extended and thus only 1 monitor (or tv) is accessible at any one time.

This changes a bit from how XP worked (XP supported several more multi-monitor modes).

Oh... and you want a DVD player that supports non-overlay playback (something that will use VMR9 or EVR).

You can get it to work with Zoom Player, but you may have to disable UAC if you dont want to use the alpha version.
 
Blight said:
To use multi-monitor on Vista, you need to set your second TV as a monitor and have it set to extend the current desktop.

This is done by right clicking the desktop (not on an icon), selecting "personalize" then "Display settings"

You can further drag the secondary monitor (the TV) to the bottom-right corner of the primary monitor so the mouse cursor wont disappear on you by accident.

My guess is that your current issue is that the second monitor is not desktop-extended and thus only 1 monitor (or tv) is accessible at any one time.

This changes a bit from how XP worked (XP supported several more multi-monitor modes).

Oh... and you want a DVD player that supports non-overlay playback (something that will use VMR9 or EVR).

You can get it to work with Zoom Player, but you may have to disable UAC if you dont want to use the alpha version.
Click to expand...


That is not quite the problem. It does not seem to want to recognise that the tv is plugged in when the monitor is also plugged in. This might be an ATI catalyst control center issue and not a Vista issue.
 
Quite possibly, as a developer, vista has given me quite a bit of headache.

I haven't messed with ATI's drivers for vista, but NVIDIA's drivers are really messed up, even now, months after vista has been released and years after vista has been in beta.

But... I did get multi-monitor working with s-video on an NVIDIA card. Couldn't disable the filtering mode (all cards filter the output to make text easier to read on a TV, but it makes video not as sharp and no vista driver support to disable this "feature" has been released by nvidia).
 
ponderingturtle said:
That is not quite the problem. It does not seem to want to recognise that the tv is plugged in when the monitor is also plugged in. This might be an ATI catalyst control center issue and not a Vista issue.
Click to expand...

I would recommend trying the catalyst control centre, I couldn’t get my vista machine to recognise the second monitor running from my ATI card until I installed the latest version (I can’t remember which car model ATM, but I can look it up when I get home).
 
Wow 8 responses and no one has said "get a Mac".

Get a Mac. :p
 
brodski said:
I would recommend trying the catalyst control centre, I couldn’t get my vista machine to recognise the second monitor running from my ATI card until I installed the latest version (I can’t remember which car model ATM, but I can look it up when I get home).
Click to expand...

I tried that but it still seems to only want to recognise the tv is connected when the monitor isn't. It gives a TV connection option but not if the monitor is connected.

And my scan converter died. I am really haveing a run of bad computer luck.
 
JLam said:
Wow 8 responses and no one has said "get a Mac".

Get a Mac. :p
Click to expand...

BUt I just purchased this one. What I am thinking of trying is going back to XP. BUt simply putting in my old hard drive was not the answer to doing that correctly.
 
ponderingturtle said:
I tried that but it still seems to only want to recognise the tv is connected when the monitor isn't. It gives a TV connection option but not if the monitor is connected.

And my scan converter died. I am really haveing a run of bad computer luck.
Click to expand...

have you tried ticking "force TV detection" in the control center, under "display options"?
 
brodski said:
then i'm all out of ideas, sorry. :(



It is possible, but if you don't know what you are doing it's very tricky, and if it's an ATI issue rather than a vista issue using Linux isn't going to help you.
Click to expand...

My point was that software is limited for linux
 
ponderingturtle said:
But can I do what I actualy purchased the computer to do with that?
Click to expand...

Depends on what your needs are. It's very easy to dual-boot as well - i.e. no need to uninstall Vista.

It's a bit of a drastic solution to your problem though. XP might be a better idea if there's no Vista fix.
 
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