Saturday, February 05, 2011

Gee, thanks...

Remember this computer? That client contacted me the other day looking to upgrade. We went with 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium and a 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD; the two Raptors became a RAID 0 scratch disk.

All was working beautifully until he plugged-in his LaCie 526; Windows wouldn't let him set it above 1280x720. Restarting, installing LaCie's monitor drivers, and even forcing the native resolution wouldn't work... I had him double-check every driver, setting, and OSD option, but we couldn't figure it out. I suspected Windows was treating the monitor as a TV, and instructed him to check the EDID setting while I was on the phone with him, but he couldn't find it.

I had him contact LaCie, and they promptly responded with a horribly written e-mail instructing him to contact Microsoft and download some nondescript patch for Windows 7 (yeah, just "download a patch to fix the issue") and let them know if he found a solution.

So I did some more reading and noticed that the EDID setting only appears if the monitor is receiving a digital signal. Since the client couldn't find the setting, I'm guessing the monitor was defaulting to DVI-A. I had him force it to DVI-D in the OSD, the EDID setting appeared, and when he changed it appropriately, Windows allowed the monitor's native 1920x1200 resolution.

LaCie should've been aware of such a possibility, especially for a customer who bought a $1500+ monitor.

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