On my system when a discreet video card is installed the onboard HDMI port is disabled. There is no workaround for this. I am amazed you got the HDMI to work at all. It is possible that when the video card drivers start up the HDMI port quits.

Jeff :emotion-22:

Hi there,  did you get anywhere with this?

I've got an Inspiron 580 with 4GB DDR3 and the H57 chipset on the motherboard.   I have a 22" VGA widescreen monitor and  a standard DVI 19" monitor plugged int the HDMI port on the motherboard.  Normally when I boot the two screens display the windows initalising but just as it goes to the login screen I only get the display on the VGA monitor.  Systems then continues to windows and doesn't recognise the second monitor.

I rolled back the driver and got the two screens working for a while perfectly. But on shutting down the machine and rebooting it reverted to the same problem where only one was active (the VGA one).  There isn't anything wrong with the physical connections as it does seem to work... seems to be the driver but even though I've updated it to the latest and tried older ones I'm still not getting stable HDMI out to the 19" monitor.

Any clues as to how to fix ths?

Initially i thought the HDMI wouldn't work at all but i think with some of the updating and so on of the driver it now works at bootup.

One time when I was rolling back the driver to the previous (factory) version the HDMI port suddenly became active and detected the second monitor but after 5 minutes or so it disabled again.  When it was active it showed up on the Intel HD configuration page and I'd full control of the monitor resolution and position etc.

I wondering if I Dell should be doing something about this for me as the machine is only a week or so old.  I bought an ASUS EAH 4350 with HDMI, VGA and DVI outputs thinking this would get the two screens going but the PC wouldn't boot with this card in at all so i took it back and got a refund this evening.  I tried a Quatro NVidea card from my PC at work and it seemed to work fine so the PCI-Express is definetly intact and working.  I'm a bit dissapointed with the Inspiron  as it is sold as a Home desktop/media PC and doesn't support two monitors from its mother board outputs.

Yes that is exactly what I'm doing - running the Inspiron 580 without a discrete Graphics card and have a 22" 1980x1080 VGA monitor plugged into the 15-Way connector and my 19" 4:3 DVI monitor connected to the HDMI port.  Both running off the embedded Motherboard Graphics.

I've had some success so believe its possible but i cannot see it being stable at the moment and it normally goes just to the VGA at login.

Are you trying to run two monitors without a discreet video card?

Jeff

I honestly don't know if what you propose is possible. I would think it is not. That is just opinion - I have never tried it. However for not very much money I would add a video card and avoid the headaches!!

Whatever the outcome is would you please post your results here? It may very well help other users in the future.

Good Luck.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I'm away this evening for a few days holidays but will get onto Dell on my return early next week. If they cannot help I'll not hesitate to get myself another compatable entry level graphics card that hopefully will work with the motherboard. I'll post back when I get some progress as I can see that this is a reasonably common problem.

Sounds like the easiest solution is to buy a graphics card from the likes of Amazon (probably the HD5450 seen one going cheap).

Initially i thought the HDMI wouldn't work at all but i think with some of the updating and so on of the driver it now works at bootup. One time when I was rolling back the driver to the previous (factory) version the HDMI port suddenly became active and detected the second monitor but after 5 minutes or so it disabled again. When it was active it showed up on the Intel HD configuration page and I'd full control of the monitor resolution and position etc. I wondering if I Dell should be doing something about this for me as the machine is only a week or so old. I bought an ASUS EAH 4350 with HDMI, VGA and DVI outputs thinking this would get the two screens going but the PC wouldn't boot with this card in at all so i took it back and got a refund this evening. I tried a Quatro NVidea card from my PC at work and it seemed to work fine so the PCI-Express is definetly intact and working. I'm a bit dissapointed with the Inspiron as it is sold as a Home desktop/media PC and doesn't support two monitors from its mother board outputs.

I am having exactly this problem too - did you have any joy in the end?

Oops wrong issue.... also had a memory issue with the Insprion.

As for the graphics card I just ebayed the one I bought initially and went for a diffreent branded one.. the HD5450 as mentioned above and all is going good now.

Yep they came out and replaced the DDR memory.  It was a known fault.  Just needed to tell them that you had run all the comprehensive mem tests and upgraded the BIOS,   when they realised that this didn't help they sent a guy out with new memory.  It was a different brand and rather than 4 pieces it was in 2 sticks.  If you're outside warranty I'd just replace them myself otherwise get Dell to do it for free... machine has been 100% reliable since.