Dell 3008WFP DVI-D re-occuring port failure for many users.

* I actually had to be in Service Mode for PowerStrip to write the EDID successfully.  Having DCC/CI "on", but exiting the Service Mode didn't allow me to write to the EDID.

Seems strange, but it explains why PowerStrip didn't work for me even after I turned on DDC/CI in the service menu.

By the way, DDCW can be run off a bootable CD and the best part is it is free.  The floppy just gave me the option to pipe the output to a txt file.  I guess not many people have floppy drives on their systems anymore.

I followed this and other similar threads with great interest as I was having similar (Entering power save...) issues with my Dell UltraSharp 2007FP monitor.

I tried some of the workarounds listed here and on other sites to no avail (at least consistently) until I hit the suggestion of trying a different (higher quality) DVI-D cable than the stock one. I went and bought the Belkin Pro Series DVI-D Single Link cable of 3 meters (manufacturer's code: CC5000AED10) and *fingers crossed* this seems to have resolved the issue for me.

Hope this helps someone!

HI, I've was following this thread for several months and was happy to jump on here a few days ago to find a solution to this.  Port 1 on my 3008wfp went ou a couple of weeks after I got it, and luckily I've been going since on port 2.  I'd like to get the EDID reprogrammed for port 1, but have so far been unsuccessful.  I was wondering if someone can help me out with either Fusion22's solution (ddcw.exe) or ESwong's (Powerstrip).  Here is what I have done for each:

I downloaded the EDID_writer package that contains ddcw.  I have Vista 64bit and have tried several ways of booting to command prompt and trying to run this.  I do not have a floppy drive, so I created a bootable CD with Magic ISO that has Win98se, and included the files from EDID_writer.  I boot to prompt fine, but can never see the other files. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.  It seemed so much easier to do tasks like this before windows!

Powerstrip v3.86 - I have tried this as well, but always get the message that "DDC communication failed or is not supported" even when both the monitor OSD and service menu show that DDC/CI communication is on (when trying to read data directly from monitor).  I do not see an option to update the monitor either.

I have EVGA GeForce GTX280's if that helps

Any help would be appreciated, as I'd sure hate to have to RMA this thing before my warranty period runs out.

Raemus,

Try downloading the CD-Image ISO from:

http://www.jeffgeiger.com/Stuff/DVI_Recover.htm

One note: this ISO includes an autoexec.bat file with the commands:

ddcw -m 0 -p

ddcw -m 1 -p

You may need to use "ddcw -m 2 -p" if your monitor cable is on port 2 of the video card.  Sorry, but I don't how to tell which port on the video card is port 1 or port 2.

I assume you can do a dir command to get a directory listing of the CD.  DDCW should be listed.  If not, you may want to try burning the CD with a different CD burning program such as Nero.

BTW: Do you know what happened that resulted in the loss of DVI Port 1?  For me, it seemed to happen when I accidently booted the computer with the monitor turned off and then turned the monitor on after the computer was booted.

If you end up using Powerstrip, it was reported by ESWong that the service menu must be open while using Powerstrip for things to work.

Good luck.

Also, if you can't find the original EDID information, this might come in handy.

00 FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 10 AC 35 40 4C 37 38 31
13 13 01 03 80 41 29 78 EA 8F 95 AD 4F 32 B2 25
0F 50 54 A5 4B 00 81 80 A9 40 D1 00 D1 40 71 4F
81 00 B3 00 01 01 B0 68 00 A0 A0 40 2E 60 30 20
36 00 81 90 21 00 00 1E 00 00 00 FF 00 47 35 32
35 48 39 35 38 31 38 37 4C 0A 28 3C 80 A0 70 B0
23 40 30 20 36 00 81 91 21 00 00 1C 00 00 00 FD
00 31 56 1D 71 1C 00 0A 20 20 20 20 20 20 00 4F

dak

Try downloading the CD-Image ISO from: http://www.jeffgeiger.com/Stuff/DVI_Recover.htm BTW: Do you know what happened that resulted in the loss of DVI Port 1?  For me, it seemed to happen when I accidently booted the computer with the monitor turned off and then turned the monitor on after the computer was booted.

This worked!  I was able to boot to CD no problem and run the command for port 2.  I was able to see that the header was "00 A7 FF ..." prior to the update, and it is now showing "00 FF FF..."   I am currently using my monitor on the original port that stopped working.  I set the EDIDWP to "on" in the service menu, so hopefully that will help prevent this from happening again.

If I remember correctly, this first happend when I sat down to use the computer, and the monitor just never came out of standby.

Thanks for the help!

Fusion 22, or anyone for that matter, if you could please help me I'd really appreciate it. I've booted with the DVI Recovery CD but the command prompt is giving me problems...

It keeps saying 'fatal error on request for capabilities', 'failure to open DDC Channel'

Any help is much appreciated as my monitor takes 25 minutes at this point to get running every single time. I'm not sure how to approach this issue, please see image linked below

PS I have turned on DDCCI

... some suggestions:

1) make sure you are communicating on the right port (try ddcw -m 1 -p  or ddcw -m 0 -p)

2) try a dvi cable from a different manufacturer; a poor cable will cause communication problems

3) make sure ddc is turned ON in the service mode (see earlier posts) and not just in the OSD panel... I'm not sure, but the service panel may over-ride the setting in the OSD

4) Make sure the EDID is not set to "write protect" ON in the service panel

5) Try connecting the monitor to another computer with a different video board.  Your video board may not be DDC-compliant and therefore incapable of proper DDC communication.

You may have more serious problems than just a corrupt EDID header.  If it takes 25 minutes for the monitor to get going then it is likely that there is something else wrong.  Consider returning the monitor to DELL if still under warranty.  If you mess up the settings in the service panel then you will probably void any warranty.

Thanks Fusion. I plugged the monitor into another computers DVI port and seems like I got more action going in Command Prompt. I thought this would have taken care of it...

After entering the "ddcw -m 1 -p", I got "EDID read from device:"...is that what we're looking for?

"ddcw -m 0 -p" and "ddcw -m 2 -p" were both giving failures, I only got the EDID read from device when using "ddcw -m 1 -p". Either way I tried to hot swap the DVI cable in back of monitor to try all of the commands, and still, only ddcw -m 1 -p was working.

I thought this would have fixed the problem but I plugged back into the original computer, turned the PC on, waited until PC was booted completely. Turned on monitor and it went back into energy save mode on both DVI Ports 1 & 2.

To answer your questions:

1) I'm not sure what port I was communicating with so I tried them all: 0, 1, 2

2) I haven't tried a different cable from a manufacturer, guessing this will be last resort

3) DDC was turned on in OS panel AND in Service Panel

4) EDID was set to off/disabled in service panel

5) I received more action in MS DOS after connecting to another computer, guessing my original PC was not able to communicate.

Here is what happened after I entered ddcw -m 1 - p

Really appreciate the help man, I'd love to fix this ridiculously annoying problem.

bellasophie,

Looks like you are making some progress. The EDID header info looks correct (at least the first eight bytes!)

You should always turn on the monitor first and then boot the computer.  This way the computer can communicate with the monitor during boot-up and establish the monitor type.  I found that the EDID can get corrupted if you turn the monitor on and off while the computer is still on or if you hot-swap the dvi-d cable.  It does not happen all the time, but it will get you eventually doing this.  I have never had this problem with any other monitor from other manufacturers ... only with DELL.

Try the two different computers ... each time doing the connections with the power off, then turn the monitor on, then the computer.  If one computer works, but not the other then you may have a bad video board or you may need to update the driver. 

... good luck

Hi,

this thread is already quite old, but there was no "official" statement about the root cause of the problem. I think, I know the reason why the EDID code can be corrupted, at least I have a strong suspicion.

My 3008WFP worked without problems for about 16 months. But last Sunday, my computer came up with a ridiculously low screen resolution. It turned out, that the EDID information read from the monitor was corrupt so that the video driver switched to VGA resolution. It's not the header, but 8 Bytes from position 64 to 71 are now all 0xFF. I.e., 8 bytes of the EEPROM content were completely deleted.

My guess is, that at least my problem was caused by an electrostatic discharge (ESD). The air humidity here is quite low and there were some discharges (small sparks) during the last days when I touched the frame surface of the monitor to switch it on and off. But I only touched the frame, not a connector or an open cable. If this is really the case, then it would show a very poor design of the monitor. All electrical circuits of a device of this class should be protected sufficiently against ESD.

I'm using Linux where it's very easy to ignore the EDID information and to specify the display parameters directly. But nevertheless, I would like to correct it. Thanks to dkaardal for the EDID content of his monitor. The corrupt bytes of my monitor are in the "2560x1600" mode description, so I can simply replace them. Does anybody know of a Linux utility to write EDID data to the monitor? If not, I will try to create a DOS floppy and use ddcw.

LPHG,

I think you are correct about ESD corrupting the EDID.  Corruption also seems to occur if the monitor is "hot-swapped" on the DVI port.  Even turning the monitor off and on while the computer is still running can lead to corruption.  Yes, you would think that a monitor should not be susceptible to this problem, but Dell monitors seem to be the exception.  I have used many other brands of monitors and never encountered this problem.

I am not aware of any Linux utilities for changing EDID info.  However, there is a Windows utility called PowerStrip that may work if you are willing to boot into Windows.  Here is the link: http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

Unfortunately, I have not seen Dell willing to acknowledge this problem with this monitor.  They seem to prefer to have users return the monitors for service.  This is understandable in some ways, but it would be nice if they would at least acknowledge that the problem exists and try to rectify it in their future designs.  It is for this reason that I will be unlikely to buy another Dell monitor in the future.

... good luck!

Fusion22,

I've corrected the content of the EDID EEPROM of my 3008WFP successfully! I did use ddcw because it's free and I hope, that I won't need it any more in the future (now I've got a special antistatic ESD mat on my desk to protect the monitor).

In the service menu of the monitor, I did set DDCCI to ON and EDIDWP to OFF. Then I used the command

ddcw -m 0 -f edid.txt

to reprogram the complete EEPROM, because in my case the corruption wasn't in the EDID header. In contrast to the help text of the utility, I had to use "-m 0" to use the DVI port and edid.txt was a text file containing the correct EDID data as sequence of hex bytes.

Regarding your comments about Dell. I think, no company would admit to a design bug of one on their products without massive pressure from the public. You can expect such a pressure if there's a problem with a car, but nobody cares about corrupted EDID data of a computer monitor, except those who are affected by it. At most you can expect a free repair. But I (and I think most most others) want to avoid the hassle of a repair. And I fear, that I wouldn't get my monitor back but an exchange part that might have a pixel error.

Thanks again to you and all others in this thread!

Best regards

How do i export EDID from my monitor? Just in case EDID will get fked up again as it did? First time i send it back and got probably refurbished (i send back 1 day old lcd it was broken out of the box).