Help - Can't get Geforce Go 6200 to talk to external monitor

[baratron]

Hi, please help me if you can.

We recently bought a Sony Vaio laptop that has a Geforce Go 6200 graphics card and Windows XP. We are trying to connect it to an external monitor, but it isn't working.

This is what happens: on booting the laptop, the Vaio bootup screen appears on both the laptop screen and the external monitor screen. Then the BIOS checking equipment screen appears, then the Windows login screen. At this point, the external monitor "gives up", and displays the "lost signal" message. Once the signal has been "lost", the only way to get it back is to reboot the laptop.

There is nothing wrong with the monitor as it successfully displays output from our PS2, and I presume there is nothing wrong with the cable for 2 reasons: a)because the picture appears ok before Windows boots, and b) because we have no problems whatsoever getting the ancient laptop (running Windows 98) to display on the external screen through the same cable. As the picture disappears when XP starts, I am assuming it must be an XP problem, but I can't work out what. The monitor resolution is set to 1280x768 and 60Hz refresh rate, which is identical to the Vaio's internal screen. (The monitor is a brand-new widescreen LCD that can handle higher resolution and higher refresh rate than this).

I have been told that Vaios disable the second monitor by default and I should use F7 to toggle between the Vaio's internal screen only, dual internal and external display, or external monitor only. However, this makes absolutely no difference, as once the signal has been "lost" from the external monitor, nothing will get it back. The only way we can get a picture to stay on the external monitor while Windows runs is to boot Windows XP in Safe mode, which is useless for running the applications I want to run.

The Vaio troubleshooting thing is completely useless because it assumes you are running the second monitor off a secondary display adapter, but we don't have one. Do we need to get one?

I'm so confused, please help.

[TierMann]

You probably just need to enable cloning in the nvidia control panel.
It sounds like the drivers are what's turning it off if it clones the boot screen and then stops when windows loads outside safe-mode.

Display Settings -> Settings -> Advanced -> Geforce Tab -> Nview Display Settings -> Choose "Clone" from the "nView Display Mode" dropdown box, or select the external as your display.

[baratron]

It's set :(. Everything on here is set up for cloning - the Windows Display Properties Control Panel says Display: (Multiple Monitors) on NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200, and the GeForce Go 6200 tab says nView Display Mode: Clone display. The GeForce tab even knows that the external monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster 730MW (Analog) - it just won't provide a signal for it.

Thinking it might be that the card couldn't run two monitors at once, we tried using Single display with the external monitor only, but it still didn't work - the external display disappeared at the same point during the Windows boot sequence. It must be that something is killing the second display during Windows boot-up, but I don't know what. The Vaio monitor switcher, the Windows display switcher and the GeForce display switcher ALL think that there should be two monitors running.

Are there any common services that XP runs at boot up that are known to conflict with the card? Or uncommon service programs that are Vaio-specific?

[TierMann]

Not sure about the Vaio monitor switcher, as I've never had a Vaio, but is it possible to disable that either by just removing it from startup, or registry, or services?

It almost has to be one of those 3 things (vaio switcher, nvidia panel, and windows display settings) conflicting. Next thing to try if that doesn't work is re-enabling the vaio switcher and uninstalling nvidia drivers and reboot with the defaults and see if it still clones in windows. Atleast then you can know where the prob is.

Just some ideas.

[baratron]

Just in case anyone else has this problem: Disabling the Vaio Event Service solves it.

This is somewhat non-ideal, because it loses ALL the function key configs, not just the F7 that was interfering with the nVidia settings - but at least it works :). Stupid Sony, putting in software that conflicts with the hardware...