Server 2008 not allowing 1920x1080 on V243HQ

jblum2000

Hello all --

 

I've been using a V243HQ monitor quite happily on a Windows 7 system for a few years, at 1920x1080 resolution.  But I've just had to shift that monitor over onto a Windows Server 2008 R2 box, and the drivers are refusing to recognize its preferred screen size.  The Control Panel / Display dialog won't show any resolution choices greater than 1440x900; this displays with a black border around the image.

 

In Device Manager, the display adapter is "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter" (Microsoft's vgapnp.sys) and the monitor is "Generic P&P Monitor" (Microsoft's monitor.sys).  I've tried downloading the V243HQ drivers from the Acer site; the first time I installed it, it made no difference, though at least it updated a few of the internal settings (e.g. creating the registry entries which *said* the max resolution was 1920).  But then I tried rolling back and reinstalling -- and now Windows won't even let me install the new driver; when presented with the new driver files it says the generic Microsoft driver is actually the most up to date version!

 

So.  Where do I go from here?

jblum2000

Forgot to mention -- this is over a DVI connection, not VGA,despite what the Device Manager says.  In fact, here's a fuller explanation:

 

The machine has two sets of video outs, one on the motherboard and one on an extension board; each board has both a VGA and a DVI out.  The fact that the display adapter only refers to VGA may be significant, or may not.

 

And just to complicate matters -- while Device Manager says there's only the one Microsoft device present, Acer's Hardware Vendor Detection utility says that it's nVidia.  Device Manager doesn't seem to admit that there's any nVidia device present at all.

 

I'm using the ports on the extension board, on the advice of the manager I just inherited this machine from -- but getting more coherent information from him about how he got the box into this state might be too much of an ask!

 

Any advice on how to proceed, very much appreciated...

jblum2000

Solution turned out to be that I had to first get the correct nVidia driver installed, then power down and completely unplug the monitor, connect *both* the VGA and DVI cables (like on the first initialization of the monitor), plug it back in and power up.

 

Not the most obvious solution, but it worked!