How to fix "Out of Range" resolution problems
with NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Model 64/Model 64Pro with BENQ FP61E
Today I had a task to
change an old CRT Monitor to
LCD
BENQ Model FP61E on a computer running
Microsoft Windows XP
SP3.
Changing phyiscally the monitors and restarting the computer to
load with the new BENQ monitor ended up with the LCD Monitor
showing a blank screen with error:
Out of Range
making the computer completely unusable.
Thanksfully in Windows
Safe Mode the monitor was able to
display the screen properly, so I had an option to operate somehow
on the pc
My guess was that the
Out of Range monitor problems were
caused by an incorrect (monitor unsupported resolution).
Therefore what I tried as a fix to make it work was:
1. Enter
Windows Safe Mode and change (lower the resolution)
to
640x480, and restart the PC.
Unfortunately using this classical way to fix such issues failed...
so I thought of some options.
2. Disable the video card
NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Model 64 driver
and check if this will make any difference.
I come up with the idea the
Out of Range LCD issues might be
caused by the
Video card driver cause I've noticed in safe
mode a standard VESA like VGA Driver shipped with Windows worked
just fine.
To Disable the currently loaded
NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Model 64/ Model
64Pro I used:
System -> Device Manager -> Hardware (Tab) ->
Display Adapters
Clicking on
Display Adapters the
NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Model
64 appears using the option menu on it one can choose to
disable the driver.
Further on restart Windows, to test if the XP will load properly
with disabled
NVidia video drivers.
Onwards it was clear the whole
Out of Range issues were
caused by some kind of conflict between the
LCD BENQ FP61E
Monitor and the
NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Model 64
Often latest video drivers solves hardware incompitability issues
and fix many bugs, upgrading the driver to latest is always a good
idea.
3. Therefore I
Upgraded the NVIDIA Riva TNT2 64 driver
(using Safe Mode) to the latest available from Nvidia's official
site.
Weirdly Upgrading NVidia Riva TNT2 drivers to the latest did not
fix the
Out of Range blank screen error.
After a bit of thinking on what to do to make the Monitor work fine
with the Nvidia driver, I thought of completely uninstalling the
Nvidia drivers and installing them again might be a fix.
In my previous experience with Windows at many occasions,
uninstalling a driver failing to properly work and installing it
again with a working version was a good fix.
4. Uninstall the NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Model and Install the latest
driver.
Uninstalling and Installing the Video driver had to be done in
Windows Safe Mode again, in normal mode the windows was not
displaying anything.
After The driver installation program completes the installation it
requires a restart. After the restart the Video driver gets loaded
fine and Windows loaded up in Normal mode as usual ;)