Another reason to hate Vista

[Sibling DavidH]

The wife and I went to a Rotarian dinner last night, as mentioned elsewhere, to talk about our charity.  I set up my laptop and the charity's projector, which worked first time, as always.
Then the image switched to just half a picture.  I hadn't touched anything, it just happened.  When I tried to play with it, no picture at all.  In the end the wife had to give an impromptu talk without pictures.
I have personally done at least 10 talks with that setup, and never a hint of trouble.  It was Vista, not the projector, which appeared to be projecting everything the computer passed to it.

I HATE MICROS***!   

[Griffin NoName]

Vista probably channels the Anti-Christ.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

The wife and I went to a Rotarian dinner last night, as mentioned elsewhere, to talk about our charity.  I set up my laptop and the charity's projector, which worked first time, as always.
Then the image switched to just half a picture.  I hadn't touched anything, it just happened.  When I tried to play with it, no picture at all.  In the end the wife had to give an impromptu talk without pictures.
I have personally done at least 10 talks with that setup, and never a hint of trouble.  It was Vista, not the projector, which appeared to be projecting everything the computer passed to it.

I HATE MICROS***!   

I've seen that error:  Windoze, for whatever reason, refused to recognize your device's settings, and sent a reduced resolution image to it-- which the projector interpreted as 1/2 an image (projectors tend to be highly picky about resolutions, in my experience).

Likely, if you'd opened the device manager (deeply hidden in Vista, I'm told) you'd likely have seen that dreaded little yellow triangle with an exclamation point... "device not working".

...gaaaaaahhhh....  there ought to be a top-level MESSAGE you could click when that happens-- at least for anything that's a display....

[Sibling DavidH]

Thanks, Bob - but why would the damn thing suddenly do it in mid-session?  And after so many problem-free sessions?
I got into the so-called 'Catalyst Control Centre' provided by Acer, but it was shown at the wrong resolution so the OK button was out of sight.  I tried TAB until I hoped the OK button was highlighted, but didn't find it.  All this, in front of an expectant audience.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Thanks, Bob - but why would the damn thing suddenly do it in mid-session?  And after so many problem-free sessions?

'cause it's microsquish?  And nobody on earth-- not even bill gates himself, knows what lurks in the 'heart' of microsquish?

I got into the so-called 'Catalyst Control Centre' provided by Acer, but it was shown at the wrong resolution so the OK button was out of sight.  I tried TAB until I hoped the OK button was highlighted, but didn't find it.  All this, in front of an expectant audience.

In truth, "Catalyst" is created by Amd, the owner of ATI-type (radeon) video chipsets and video cards. 

As for why it suddenly quit?  Do you have the abomination "automatic updates" enabled?  If you do-- one or more of those "updates" likely screwed your basic settings, or overlaid the registry entries with "updates".  I've seen that happen only too frequently--- and "update" crashing a previously working piece of hardware.

First thing I'd have tried, would be to disconnect the projector so as to see the screen, and check the video settings-- or better still, enable both the projector AND the laptop's screen.  Most laptop screens these days, if the resolution is too large, simply go into a "pan and scan" mode, and you can drag the part of the screen that's not visible-- into visibility.

Barring that?  Booting into safe mode, and DELETING the projector entry, to let windoze re-find it often cures a multitude of ills-- in fact, sometimes you don't even need safe mode-- go into the device manager and enable "hidden devices" so you can see all those entries of things not currently attached.  Delete the offending/non-functional device.  Then disconnect, and re-connect it, to let the wizard stupid re-install it.  If you don't have your driver's disk, and it asks?  Point to the windoze SYSTEM32 directory-- or if you have one, a DRIVERS (under WINDOWS) directory.

9 of 10 times, re-installing the damn drivers fixes things that are now broken, but worked previously....

...stupid windoze. 

[Sibling DavidH]

Sounds like a whole lot of useful advice, Bob.  I'll plug the projector in here at home and see what happens. Thanks!

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

You bring up a valid point, I am very much an AMD/ATI user and indeed the bloody catalyst window is so big that it doesn't fit in a low resolution (which is what you get when things go wrong).