Monitor "Out of Range"?

jor el

I have a Benq FP931 19" LCD monitor and something strange happened at the weekend. All was working well, then I needed to reboot Windows and at the BIOS post screen and during Windows load, the monitor displayed a red exclamation mark and an error "Out of Range". The display only started working when I get to the log in screen. This was working fine up to this point.

Now I did a quick search and that seems to be a refresh rate problem, if you were in Windows and had control of that, but this is happening from when I turn it on until Windows log-in.

It's not a big problem except that now I can't enter the BIOS as I can't see anything. I'll need to try a different monitor but the graphics card is dual DVI and I had no DVI-VGA converter to try my old CRT with. I'm using the DVI cable to the Benq monitor.

Anyone any ideas or seen anything like this? I'm going to try the CRT when I get a chance.

Irishpimpdude

Have you got an s-video cable connected to a tv by any chance?

jor el

No, there's only a single DVI cable connected.

gamer

swap in old agp,or pc grahics card, try using a dvi cable instead of comp/video.vga cable.

Optikus

Try a CRT to get into Windows and set the refresh rate to the native of the TFT.

If you have a Sli board, move the Gfx card to the other slot then boot from that, your resolution and refresh rate should be set to the lowest.

astrofool

His problem is with the bios, which means that the monitor isn't displaying 320x200 correctly, it may be that it is trying to use a stupidly high refresh as old crt's could do 140hz+ in 320 mode. TFT's are limited to 60-75 all the time. Why did you need to reboot btw? It undoubtedly is something you changed or installed that caused this, refresh rate forcer perhaps?

Carragherisgod

Most monitors come with an option to reset the display 2 factory defaults. Mine uses the contrast and brightness combo of buttons to do this. Not sure if your's does have this option but maybe it's worth a look?

gamer

try safe mode windows,holdown f8 on bootup ,of pc.

SickBoy

gamer wrote:

try safe mode windows,holdown f8 on bootup ,of pc.

Did you even read the original post?

TomCo

Have you tried reinstalling the gfx card drivers?

This happened to me twice and reinstalling the drivers fixed it.

TerrorFirmer

Sounds like you'll need a crt before you can really do anything...

TomCo

HavoK wrote:

Sounds like you'll need a crt before you can really do anything...

jor el wrote:

The display only started working when I get to the log in screen.

Seems as though the OP can get into windows, just can't see anything during bootup. There's plenty he can do in this case.

TerrorFirmer

Sorry, read that completely wrong, my mistake...:o

PogMoThoin

No it just doesn't work until he gets to log-in screen so he cant see bios screen. Works in windows fine.
sounds like a driver ****ed up. un-install & then re-install graphics driver. Had that prob myself before. That should solve it.

When its working, uninstall graphics driver in ctrl panel, boot to safe mode f8, use driver cleaner & then re-install gfx driver so gfx driver will be clean.

jor el

Thanks for all the comments. It's not a driver issue as the problem only exists at boot up, not in Windows.

astrofool wrote:

His problem is with the bios, which means that the monitor isn't displaying 320x200 correctly, it may be that it is trying to use a stupidly high refresh as old crt's could do 140hz+ in 320 mode. TFT's are limited to 60-75 all the time. Why did you need to reboot btw? It undoubtedly is something you changed or installed that caused this, refresh rate forcer perhaps?

As to what I was changing, I was modifying the disk controller DMA settings as I was getting extremely slow transfer rates from DVD to hard disk. I set it to "Let BIOS select transfer mode" on the hard disk and then the screen wouldn't work on boot up but came back at the login.

It's a spare PC at my parent's house anyway so I'll just bring a DVI-VGA adapter and connect the CRT and see if it's something in the BIOS. All very strange.

It's a dual-DVI graphics card too so I might enable the 2nd port in Windows and connect it to that. The 2nd port is not active on boot up so the monitor just goes into power save.

PogMoThoin

had exact same prob, re-installing driver worked for me. give it a go, got nothing to loose.

Carragherisgod

PogMoThoin wrote:

had exact same prob, re-installing driver worked for me. give it a go, got nothing to loose.

Really? Because Windows doesn't initiate the drivers until it's nearly fully loaded. And BIOS obviously doesn't use Windows drivers to display the post screen which is where the problem is .... Now I'm not saying a reinstall of the drivers won't work but I'd be surprised if it does fix it :rolleyes:

Carragherisgod

jor el wrote:

As to what I was changing, I was modifying the disk controller DMA settings as I was getting extremely slow transfer rates from DVD to hard disk. I set it to "Let BIOS select transfer mode" on the hard disk and then the screen wouldn't work on boot up but came back at the login.

Did you try reset the BIOS with the CMOS reset jumper on the mainboard??

zilog_jones

Yes, try resetting the BIOS. This is very odd O_o Sounds like either your BIOS has gone funky or the monitor is just cack.

Actually, I remember my friend's parents got a cheap-ass LCD monitor for their old Celeron 500, and it could never display the Compaq logo (text mode) on POST (said "out of range"), though when you pressed F10 to get to the BIOS settings things were visible.

And FYI astrofool, standard text mode is 720x400, usually at 70Hz.

TomCo

Carragherisgod wrote:

Really? Because Windows doesn't initiate the drivers until it's nearly fully loaded. And BIOS obviously doesn't use Windows drivers to display the post screen which is where the problem is .... Now I'm not saying a reinstall of the drivers won't work but I'd be surprised if it does fix it :rolleyes:

Worked for me too, twice.

gamer

i read the full post, ,try del,f2, get into bios mode, you may have to borrow old grahics card,or crt monitor,can you enable bios onboard graphics vga,it it has onboard vga.Some1 on boards will lend you a card,if necessary.

gamer

get old pci graphics card, set refresh rate,to 60mhz, 800by 600 or the native resolution of the monitor.