H276HL Monitor and Windows 8.1

Good Morning Acer community,

Yesterday I decided to update my brand spanking new PC from Windows 8 to 8.1. Everything worked fine on windows 8 which I used for the first week I had the PC, but after upgrading to 8.1 my monitor (Acer H276HL) no longer displays at 1960 x 1080. There is also a black border around the monitor which I can't get rid of. Instead of being a HD 27" monitor it seems more like a low resolution 24" monitor.

Windows thinks the monitor is displaying at a full 1960x1080 (see screen below), but this is not the case. The resolution is garbage compared to before the update. (You can right click and copy image URL to view the full screen/resolution images.) Not the real resulution

I called Acer, and their solution was to do a factory refresh, essentially bringing my PC back to windows 8. Their reason was Acer did not have any drivers available for my monitor on windows 8.1.

Here is a picture showing the border around the monitor. It's faint but you can see the lit up black pixels which should be part of my screen. The darker outside is the actual monitor border. At the top I am missing nearly half an inch of monitor space. On the sides It's closer to an inch.

border

I am dumbfounded. Acer really doesnt have a driver for their latest and greatest monitor? Do I really need to downgrade back go Windows 8? I mean... this seems rediculous!

monitor

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jbwannabe

Had the same problem, called support told me the same thing as you. Not wanting to let this go I continued finally was able to see that the video card software was not installed correctly. Mine is a new system, wth an ATI graphics card. Don't know what you have you may want to visit the card manufacturers web-sit for update. If it is ATI you might want to look at this http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5674/ I took the lazy approach and went for auto-detect http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/auto-detect-tool have no idea where 8.1 puts your stuff.

PS if it is an ATI card that you have, be prepared to install the software twice. Don't ask why.

jbwannabe

Forgot to mention, unlike you mine is a S230HL monitor, but I think this might help.

Woodmill

graphics card.png Thanks for your quick responce and suggestions. I have an AMD Radion Graphics card, which is more than capable of handling the monitor. I ran the driver auto detect tool from AMD and it states I have the most up to date driver and had no suggestions about updates. I will give AMD a call and see if anyone there can help me further.

Woodmill

Update: Yep, it seems the video card driver is not up to date. I downloaded the updated driver as a .cab file... now if only Windows would let me control my own PC and update it.

jbwannabe

Still think it's an ATI software issue. Can you start/run the Catalyst Control Centre? If you can and change the scaling you should be good to go. If not, did you redownload the CCC suite and run it? I had to install this twice. I presume yours would be the same. The full link is: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows 8.1 - 64 don't know why the last part (8.1 - 64) is not part of the link. Best not to click on the link but do a cut and paste otherwise you may end up with the wrong software version and driver.

Woodmill

I un-installed the CCC twice, then reinstalled it twice. Nothing changed. Still having the same issue. I did anable automatic scaling... but it didnt help. I think it's a driver issue. Windows won't allow me to install my own driver for the video card. I downloaded a driver made specifically for the card... but thats where I am stuck. I can't get the .cab installed.

Anyways, thanks for the help. If I find the solution I will post again to let you know.

Mahlady

I set scaling to 0 and it fixed it for me.

I think the option says "Scale image to full size panel"

It is under the my digital flat panel properties option in the catalyst control center.

Hope this helps

jbwannabe

Too bad you still can't get it to work. My problems were the exact same as yours. The only way I was finally able to correct it (i.e. have the proper driver installed) was by installing the ATI Catalyst software, and as I said that took a couple of attempts. If yours is a new system you should be able to get some tech savvy person at Acer to correct it for you. Don't think AMD/ATI would be of much help unless you purchased/installed the video card.

If I were you, and I'm not, I'd uninstall all drivers for the video card (return them to the original system drivers), uninstall all software for the video card (if uninstalling the video drivers didn't get rid of the software), reboot & try to reinstall the Catalyst software. That's how I got my video card to work properly.

Another solution - bring everything back to where you purchased the system/monitor and have them fix the problem.

Clyde

Maybe try these steps?

http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5674

Navra

I have a somewhat similar problem. I had been using an HD HDMI 32" TV as my monitor with Windows XP. I was also using the sound in the S/PDIF mode. However, I decided to upgrade my computer to Windows 8.1. I managed to get analog sound on my old external speakers but was unable to get digital sound through the speakers on my monitor. Is my HD TV no longer compatible with Windows 8.1? Has anyone else run into this problem? I have also upgraded my audio card to a new Windos 8.1 compatible one but still cannot get S?PDIF sound out of the monitor speakers.

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