[W-Unit]

Hey guys,

So I brought my PC home for the holidays, however, due to very limited space in the truck I took, I could not take my normal monitor with me.

Now when I plug my computer into the monitor I have here, it says something about the signal not being compatible. I believe this is because of the refresh rate, since the monitors both support a resolution of 1920x1080, however my usual monitor has a refresh rate of 60Hz. I don't know what the new monitor's refresh rate is, but I'm pretty sure it's less than 60.

Of course, good ol' Safe Mode works fine, booting into 800x600, but the problem is there doesn't seem to be any way to modify the monitor settings from within safe mode such that they'll still be in effect when I boot regularly. It's like the "OK" and "Apply" buttons on the monitor settings dialog are just disabled in Safe Mode - no changes that I make are ever applied, either now or on the next non-Safe Mode boot.

How can I get around this and get my computer running on this other monitor?

Thanks!

P.S. The monitor I'm trying to use has HDMI and VGA inputs. I don't have an HDMI cable here and they're remarkably expensive ($20 for a 3' length of copper wire??? Give me a break), so I'm using a VGA cable with a VGA to DVI adapter to connect it. My normal monitor uses an HDMI cable, again with the use of an adapter since my video card only has DVI outputs.
Is there any chance that the problem is being caused by the type of cable I'm using?

Edited by W-Unit, 19 December 2009 - 06:19 PM.

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Problem solved independently.

If anyone is interested, for future reference here's what I did:

1. Boot into Safe Mode
2. Open registry editor
3. Navigate to HKCC\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO\{Address of Video Card}\0000
4. There are 3 keys in here which you should be able to recognize as having values of your X and Y resolution and your refresh rate. Edit these keys to something your monitor can support. I recommend something very standard, like 800x600 @ 30Hz. You may have to play with the refresh rate to get it right... if you need to, plug the monitor into a different computer and see what refresh rates show up as supported. Obviously you can set these values to what you really want once you can actually get into the OS as normal.
5. Restart

In case you don't know which address to navigate to, you can either:
1. Look for the subfolder of VIDEO\ which contains more than just one subfolder called "0000."
2. Look for the subfolder of VIDEO\ whose settings in "0000" match the settings you remember.

Edited by W-Unit, 20 December 2009 - 10:30 AM.

[W-Unit]

Problem solved independently.

If anyone is interested, for future reference here's what I did:

1. Boot into Safe Mode
2. Open registry editor
3. Navigate to HKCC\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO\{Address of Video Card}\0000
4. There are 3 keys in here which you should be able to recognize as having values of your X and Y resolution and your refresh rate. Edit these keys to something your monitor can support. I recommend something very standard, like 800x600 @ 30Hz. You may have to play with the refresh rate to get it right... if you need to, plug the monitor into a different computer and see what refresh rates show up as supported. Obviously you can set these values to what you really want once you can actually get into the OS as normal.
5. Restart

In case you don't know which address to navigate to, you can either:
1. Look for the subfolder of VIDEO\ which contains more than just one subfolder called "0000."
2. Look for the subfolder of VIDEO\ whose settings in "0000" match the settings you remember.

Edited by W-Unit, 20 December 2009 - 10:30 AM.