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Twinview not working and nvidia-settings crashing on T61 (Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M)

Hi!

I've been trying to get my dual-head setup working with my T61 (Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M) during the last 3 weeks. I experimented with many different xorg configurations and different driver versions without success.

I managed to get a (randomly) working Twinview clone setup 2 or 3 times, but usually i'm experiencing a strange behaviour when following these steps:

- Boot the system without the external monitor connected
- Connect monitor
- Start nvidia-settings
- Click on "Detect displays"
- Choose Twinview/Clone Setup for correctly detected Dell 2005FPW
- Click Apply

Almost all of the times this results in the T61's LCD showing a black screen and shortly after that seeing the Desktop on the external monitor.
When I try to change anything using nvidia-settings a second time, try switching to a tty or try to restart the xserver the system freezes completly. The only way to reboot is a hard-reset.
The system also freezed after running nvidia-bug-report.sh while working on the external monitor.

I installed the latest BIOS and nvidia driver (100.14.23 using envy) without success.

As i mentioned before, a few times things "just worked" as expected. After reboot the described problems appeared again - without me touching the configuration.

I really hope Nvidia will fix these issues soon since using an external monitor/projector is one of the most basic user needs i can imagine!

cheers,
Sander

Re: Twinview not working and nvidia-settings crashing on T61 (Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M)

Though it'd be an inconvenient workaround, I wonder if you might be able to get things to work by
- connecting the external monitor and then
- (re)starting X
(perhaps by something like "startx -- :1"
to start a new X server on top of the
existing one)

It's disruptive, but a lot less so than rebooting. I've usually gone through this when attaching my laptop to an external projector.

I hadn't tried nvidia-settings to re-detect displays,
will see whether that works for me. It'd sure be nice.

Re: Twinview not working and nvidia-settings crashing on T61 (Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M)

Quote:

Originally Posted by sander2

I'm experiencing the same problem, but I have made some progress. I have the T61 6459-CTO. My external monitor is a Samsung 226cw LCD and I want to use it as a clone of my laptop's LCD. Its native resolution is 1680x1050, the same as my T61's. If I use nvidia-settings and click "apply", it works perfectly. If I save the changes to the xorg.conf file and restart X, the computer hangs.

Experimenting with different settings, I tailed the output of /var/log/Xorg.0.log while using nvidia-settings, I see it write this line:

Code:

(II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode

(II) NVIDIA(0):     "CRT-0:1680x1050@1680x1050+0+0,DFP-0:nvidia-auto-select@1680x1050+0+0"

Restarting X with settings above will cause PC to freeze. However, if I disconnect the monitor and then edit xorg.conf to have a smaller resolution on the Samsung than 1680x1050, it works fine... but with panning (move cursor to right, monitor slides over). Obviously not ideal but at least its working now.

Here's the snippet of my current xorg.conf:

Code:

Section "Screen"

    Identifier     "Screen0"

    Device         "Videocard0"

    Monitor        "Monitor0"

    DefaultDepth    24

    Option         "TwinView" "1"

    Option           "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"

    Option           "DynamicTwinView" "true"



    #WORKS

    #Option           "metamodes" "CRT-0:1280x1024_60@1680x1050+0+0, DFP-0:1680x1050_60@1680x1050+0+0"

    #Option           "metamodes" "CRT-0:1400x1050_60@1680x1050+0+0, DFP-0:1680x1050_60@1680x1050+0+0"

    Option           "metamodes" "CRT-0:1400x1050@1680x1050+0+0,DFP-0:nvidia-auto-select@1680x1050+0+0"



    #FREEZES COMPUTER

    #Option           "metamodes" "CRT-0:1680x1050_60@1680x1050+0+0, DFP-0:1680x1050_60@1680x1050+0+0"    

    #Option           "metamodes" "CRT-0:1600x1024_60@1680x1050+0+0, DFP-0:1680x1050_60@1680x1050+0+0"

    #Option           "metamodes" "CRT-0:nvidia-auto-select@1680x1050+0+0,DFP-0:nvidia-auto-select@1680x1050+0+0"

EndSection

Anything above 1400x1050 freezes the computer hard and the logs give no indication. I'd be happy if I could somehow script nvidia-settings on login to automatically set the monitors up without modifying xorg.conf.

Re: Twinview not working and nvidia-settings crashing on T61 (Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M)

Here's my bug report in case it helps.

Re: Twinview not working and nvidia-settings crashing on T61 (Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M)

Thanks mstralka!

After reading your post I did some more testing.

If I use nvidia-settings to switch to a clone setup using 1400x1050 for the external monitor (which actually has a default resolution of 1680x1050) everything works as expected! After that i can use nvidia-settings a second time and switch to 1680x1050, resulting in a working clone setup (LCD with 1680x1050 and external monitor with 1680x1050)!

Although this isn't a perfect solution it is a good work-around until nvidia will release a better/working driver!

To summarize the issue: Using nvidia-settings with the same resolution (1680x1050) for LCD and external monitor result in only one monitor working and Xserver crashing afterwards. Using 1400x1050 for the external monitor first, and then switching to the correct resolution of 1680x1050 brings up a working setup.

This looks like a driver-bug and needs to be fixed!

Re: Twinview not working and nvidia-settings crashing on T61 (Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M)

the 169.04 beta driver seems to fix the the issue! :)

Re: Twinview not working and nvidia-settings crashing on T61 (Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M)

I installed the 169.04 beta driver on Ubuntu Gutsy and it totally messed up my machine - X would not come up anymore and my wireless card stopped working completely and I had to reinstall Gutsy. I'm going to wait until Ubuntu packages the driver

Re: Twinview not working and nvidia-settings crashing on T61 (Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M)

Hi, I have the same problem like sander2 on my Lenovo R61i with nVidia Quadro NVS 140M. My OS is Fedora 8. I need this notebook for my workstation and I have any other solution then MS Windws now (thanks to nVidia driver!) :-(