Dual Monitor problems!~

[Helllearner]

Hi all,

I purchased a Samsung syncmaster sa300 (1920x1080). My old monitor is a syncmaster 2033 (1600x900). The new monitor is running on a vga cable connected to a DVI + Port with a converter/adapter. The old monitor is connected to a DVI - Port with a DVI cable. Both of these monitors are connected to Asus Direct CU 2 OC GTX 760 graphics card. I am running windows 8.1.

I have done a dual monitor setup with both of them (extending). I found out various problems when doing so.

1) Text and menus on the new monitor is way smaller then the older monitor.

2) Windows media player seems to malfunction when playing a video. It starts and the audio works properly but for the starting 2-3 seconds the video is stuck on a frame and then resumes.

3) The icons don't seem to grid anymore even when align to grid option is enabled. I can just put them where ever i want even on top of each other..

4) The start menu seems jumble-up on the monitors when I first put them in correct order on a particular screen. Ex: The desktop app is placed at the bottom left of the start menu in 1 screen. This changes the place of the app in the start menu on the other screen. It doesn't stay constant in both.

How can I solve / Work around these problems?

 

[inachu]

Lessons I have learned when going with multi displays without reading up on it I found out the following:

Always buy the same size monitor.
Always have the same screen resolution.
Never use passive monitor setups. Passive means that the ON/OFF signal is never passed through the dongle to the monitor.
To deal with less hassle ALWAYS use ATI/AMD video cards as they are multi monitor friendly..... more so than Nvidia. Sure that is an argumentative point but many will agree with me on that.

So go fix your screen resolutions make them the same and confirm your video dongle is not a passive dongle.


Ok now that you took care of the above the next thing to do is erase the settings you made on the video card software settings and set them both to defaults.
For ATI users the second monitor should copy the first monitor. Then go into eyefinity setup to make the 2 monitors act as one.

My mistake I did is that I have 3 monitors and they are all different sizes and they do not work well with each other and thats the way it is until I make them all the same size.
No amount of screen resolution changes will fix your issue.

 

[Ketchup]

Here are two sites that you may want to look through to see if they can help your experience with Windows 8:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406969,00.asp
http://www.pcworld.com/article/259794/how_to_set_up_multiple_monitors_in_windows_8.html

As far as Windows Media player, that sounds more like a codec problem than a mutli-display issue. Do music files have the same issue? If not, I would recommend downloading vlc media player, more for the codecs than the player itself. Once installed, try its player and Windows Media player and see if the problems persist.

 

[Helllearner]

@inachu Setting up the resolution in my new monitor to 1600x900 makes all the text blurry and the screen cut from the top. It looks horrible. Icons also just vanished.

I also found out that my new monitor has no recommended/native resolution. Why is that so? my old monitor in the resolution settings shows 1600x900 native.

@ketchup79 Thanks for the links it helped but still there was no solution to fixing my text and icons getting messed up.

 

[Ketchup]

Yeah, I cannot take non-native resolution on an LED or LCD display.

You may want to try the samsung driver for your monitor:
http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/LS22A300BS/ZA

If it won't install, try compatibility mode. If that doesn't work, you may need to see if Windows update will pick one up. If that doesn't work,install with the extracted drivers through device manager.

 

[inachu]

Make both set at 1024x768.

Yes sounds like you are having multiple issues here.
Uninstall any 3rd party video codec driver. Seem you need to clean your system first.
scan for viruses and malware then lastly run SFC to replace any windows files that could be corrupt. For the time being also do not use any wallpaper or active web wallpaper until your issues are resolved.

 

[inachu]

@inachu Setting up the resolution in my new monitor to 1600x900 makes all the text blurry and the screen cut from the top. It looks horrible. Icons also just vanished.

I also found out that my new monitor has no recommended/native resolution. Why is that so? my old monitor in the resolution settings shows 1600x900 native.

@ketchup79 Thanks for the links it helped but still there was no solution to fixing my text and icons getting messed up.

for the time being do not MAX out the resolutions on both.

 

[Helllearner]

@ketchup79 I installed the drivers and i got the native resolution on my new monitor as 1024x768 which is wrong. The good news is the icon snapping feature works again.

@Inachu Tried your instructions and I got edges cut off in my old monitor and the new monitor becoming very large. My computer is freshly installed. I have no 3rd party video codec drivers. No viruses/malware was found or any corrupted system files.

 

[Ketchup]

... The good news is the icon snapping feature works again.
Good.

...My computer is freshly installed. I have no 3rd party video codec drivers. No viruses/malware was found or any corrupted system files.

OK, follow my instructions above, install VLC (you can tell WMP to still be your default player) and see if you can play video.

 

[tenks]

1) Text and menus on the new monitor is way smaller then the older monitor.

Maybe his expectations are a bit off?

Your new monitor is 24" @ 1920x1080 (its native resolution)
Your old monitor is 20" @ 1600x900

Your new monitor is a much higher resolution than your older monitor, which causes things on your desktop (windows, text, menu's etc) to look smaller in comparison, that's the nature of increasing resolutions.

Unless you run your new monitor at a non-native resolution (which will cause it to look blurry and less sharp) you'll never get the text and menus to match or be the same size. It's physically impossible based on the monitors you have.

Also, can you please try to explain this part better
"4) The start menu seems jumble-up on the monitors when I first put them in correct order on a particular screen. Ex: The desktop app is placed at the bottom left of the start menu in 1 screen. This changes the place of the app in the start menu on the other screen. It doesn't stay constant in both."

I think this may also be because of the physical dimensions and resolutions of your monitors don't match...

 

[Helllearner]

@ketchup79
I have VLC player but it is not of my preference because the video changes color and doesn't look clean as in Windows media player. If you know the filter settings for VLC that look just like windows media player I would happily give that a try.

I found out that if I start a particular video 2-3 times continuously the lag/freeze it experiences goes away and plays normally until I play another video.

I have also set the scaling to 125% overall on both monitors...have to live with the one screen having all large icons etc.

Note: Before attaching my new monitor Windows media player didn't have any such problem.

 

[Helllearner]

Also, can you please try to explain this part better
"4) The start menu seems jumble-up on the monitors when I first put them in correct order on a particular screen. Ex: The desktop app is placed at the bottom left of the start menu in 1 screen. This changes the place of the app in the start menu on the other screen. It doesn't stay constant in both."

I think this may also be because of the physical dimensions and resolutions of your monitors don't match...

I mean that the placement of the live tiles do not stay at the same place in each monitor. It keeps changing the positions if I try make changes in the other monitor

Eg: The position of 1 is A in monitor 1920x1080
The position of 1 is B in monitor 1600x900

They are never at the same location even after I place them.

 

[Ketchup]

I mean that the placement of the live tiles do not stay at the same place in each monitor. It keeps changing the positions if I try make changes in the other monitor ...

Have you tried the start screen on both monitors? Do you see this behavior on both?

Have to tried switching which monitor is the primary display?

Does the video issue happen on either display?

The new monitor is running on a vga cable connected to a DVI + Port with a converter/adapter

Tell us more about this adapter.

 

[Helllearner]

I will explain with screen shots. Hopefully this is will clear all doubts.





As you can see the tiles change position in both the screens they will never stay at the same place.

This is the adapter/converter I am using for my new monitor

 

[tenks]

are you running your desktop in mirror mode? Im not familiar with windows 8.1, so do all the metro apps show up on both screens at the same time?

Again I think this goes back to your expectations/understanding of how resolutions work. The icons are moving because your newer monitor has a higher resolution which creates more "screen real estate" -

Notice everything is being moved to the left, which just tells me its just the way the desktop looks when you increase the resolution. This is normal.

Also, why are using DVI for the old monitor and VGA for the new? The newer monitor is better obviously, so shouldnt you want the best performance possible?

DVI > VGA. So plug the new monitor in with DVI and switch the VGA adapter to your old monitor. It may or may not help fix the issues, but it will be the best quality setup for your new monitor.

 

[Ketchup]

I will explain with screen shots. Hopefully this is will clear all doubts.

It sure does. And here is your answer ...

...The icons are moving because your newer monitor has a higher resolution which creates more "screen real estate" -

Notice everything is being moved to the left, which just tells me its just the way the desktop looks when you increase the resolution. This is normal.

 

[D2ultima]

I am running windows 8.1.

I have done a dual monitor setup with both of them (extending). I found out various problems when doing so.

1) Text and menus on the new monitor is way smaller then the older monitor.

2) Windows media player seems to malfunction when playing a video. It starts and the audio works properly but for the starting 2-3 seconds the video is stuck on a frame and then resumes.

3) The icons don't seem to grid anymore even when align to grid option is enabled. I can just put them where ever i want even on top of each other..

4) The start menu seems jumble-up on the monitors when I first put them in correct order on a particular screen. Ex: The desktop app is placed at the bottom left of the start menu in 1 screen. This changes the place of the app in the start menu on the other screen. It doesn't stay constant in both

As a user with Windows 8.1 and 1920 x 1080 main screen with a 1360 x 768 TV as my second screen, I have none of these problems. I will say something though:

1 - My text usually looks similar, but there's just less space for me. I don't know about that. Both are ~17" though, and my primary is a laptop display.

2 - That does NOT happen for me; not related to your issue unless in the last couple months my laptop's been down Windows 8.1 updated and broke.

3 - Doesn't happen to me either.

4 - You should not be getting the metro screen on both monitors if you're extending. The different alignment is correct though; due to mismatching screen real estate.

I also use nVidia, and SLI too which should be more headache. So I'm fairly sure something in your windows settings is the issue, rather than mismatching resolutions directly.

And now my suggestion: Have you tried extending the display via Windows' tool? Not using the nVidia control panel? I always found nVidia's control panel to cause more problems than it creates for multiple displays. It's pretty easy to do it with windows, just right click the desktop and go to screen resolution and you should be able to work from there.

 

[Helllearner]

@ketchup79
@D2ultima
@tenks

K I have figured most of the things out.
1) The icon and text will not be similar because of two different resolution monitors. I can live with that.
2) Windows media player plays properly on the primary screen but when set to secondary it starts lagging. So I will just play it on the primary, can live with that too.
3) I switched my cables and set the dvi cable for the new monitor fixing my native resolution problem. I will purchase a dvi male to female cable for my other monitor as the converter I am using seems to be the problem.
4) Rest is all fine. Thank you all for helping me solve these problems.

 

[Ketchup]

Glad it is sorted out. Still odd about the media player issue, but it could be something to do with the cables.