Stuck in DVI Power Save mode

This happen to me 3 times tonight. I had to pull the power cord to turn of my Dimension 8300. The power button will not power off the PC, and I don't see a reset button. I have nVidia GeForce FX5200 video card and using the DVI connection of a 1703FP monitor. I have the latest video driver, but not the latest BIOS. I am running WinXP Home. Each time I had just switched to another user and try to play Lara Croft Angle Of Darkness. This user did not originially installed the game and each time the game ask for Disk 1. After I inserting the disk the game still will not continue and I cannot exit the game. I had to kill the game under Task Manager. After that I log off from this user. It is at this point that the monitor get stucks in power save mode.

My problem is reproducable on my system. I think this is a WinXP problem.

Thanks wtl for starting a new thread!  Forty pages is kinda' cumbersome, don't ya' think?! 

Anyway, I am happy to report that, at least for now, I am back on my DVI cable.  In fact, I have both cables installed and have the ability to switch back and forth between analog and digital!  My setup is an 8300, XP Pro, NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440, and 1703FP. 

My DVI problem occured exactly as I was changing from one user account to another.  So, yes, Windows was running at the time of failure.  The EDID.ISO cd bootup seemed to do the trick for me, although figuring out how to do it CORRECTLY was more difficult than actually doing it!  Dell support had already had me change the driver to the one that the moderators at the top of this catagory are touting.  (By the way, that "file", R70838 is a complete new driver for the card)  It had no effect until I ran the EDID.ISO cd. 

Unfortunately, the ability to rotate the display seems to be nonexistant on the R70838 driver and I'm not to happy about that.  If anyone knows how to remedy this or knows a similar driver with this capability I would be really grateful to hear about it.

Also, if someone knows exactly what the EDID utility does, I'd be interested to know.  It LOOKS like it does something to the card's memory address or something and switches (forces?) the card to "wake up" the DVI output.

If anyone is interested in MY step-by-step procedure that worked for me I'd be happy to post it upon request!

Thanks to all.

amajamar

Ok, this is EXACTLY what I did...

Install the new drivers for the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 (R70838) (if this is the card you have)

First and MOST important, if you have more than one cdrom or cd/dvd device make sure you know which is the BOOTABLE device!  My cd/dvd burner was NOT the bootable one and it took me a long time to figure it out!

Make sure you set the BOOT SEQUENCE in the BIOS to boot the CDROM first.

1.   Leave BOTH the analog and DVI cable installed and leave the monitor on ANALOG.  (I assume you are using your analog cable now and can see the monitor)

2.   Boot from the cd - you should SEE the EDID MSDOS program run.  You will probably be left at an A:>  prompt.

3.   DO NOT BOOT TO WINDOWS YET!  Remove the analog cable from the back of the monitor leaving the DVI cable installed.  Switch the monitor to DIGITAL.  (at this point the monitor is blank,obviously!)

4.   Hit control+alt+delete to reboot.

5.   If you see the EDID MSDOS program run, it's fixed!

After that, remove the cd from the drive, re-order the boot sequence in the BIOS (if you want) and boot into Windows.

If you have the DVI feed again and you want to have BOTH the analog and digital switchable, do this.

(This worked for ME with the card and monitor I have, I would have no idea about different configurations)

1.   Go to Device Manager and confirm you have a Digital monitor listed.

2.   Plug the ANALOG cable back in and reboot. 

3.   Go to Device Manager and see if you have TWO monitors listed.  One should be Digital and the other Analog.

4.   Go to Display Properties; Settings.  There you should see a two monitor system displayed.  If you do, click the Advanced tab; GeForce4 MX 440 tab; nV View Display Mode tab.  Then click the Clone button. 

5.   Switch the monitor to analog and it should work.

That's all I have, if you have any questions, I'll try to answer them.

amajamar

Message Edited by amajamar on 03-12-2004 08:54 AM

Message Edited by amajamar on 03-12-2004 08:58 AM

Well, if you use a driver from some other source other than Dell, they probably won't support it.  If you have a problem down the line, they will just make you change it to one of theirs.

amajamar

I had the same problem and tried this simple solution that worked.  Amajamar suggested that I post it here again for people to see.  Hope it works for you!

--- old msg ---

after trying the different methods proposed in the thread (and not succeeding), I tried something really stupid that did work! Here it is... maybe it is useful to other people:

1. Connect the monitor using the DVI cable (yes, you won't see anything)

2. Reboot the computer.  I memorized the key strokes to do it (in my case )

3. Enjoy!

When the computer started rebooting, the monitor woke up.

Hope it helps

That's great to hear, mariner156!!

amajamar

Since I was mentioned as suffering from this problem I thought I would comment. Dell sent me a replacement 2000fp (brand new, by the way) and everything is working fine so far.

When I had the DVI problem before, I had been using the monitor through DVI for about 6 weeks. I've had the new monitor for 5 weeks so I wonder if it will have the same problem or not!

I was able to regain the use of the DVI interface on my 1900FP using the DVI recover utility and upgrading my display driver.

I did some research into the DVI interface and EDID and VESA standards to try and understand what was broken.  I am not an expert in this area, but as an engineer, I can sort of understand these specification documents.  I read the following documents:

VESA E-EDID Implementation guide  available from www.vesa.org
(VESA=Video Electronics Standards Association, E-EDID=Enhanced Extended Display Identification Data)

DVI Standard available from www.ddwg.org
(DVI=Digital Visual Interface)

VESA VBE Standard available from www.vesa.org
(VBE=VESA BIOS Extensions)

VESA P&D Standard available from www.vesa.org
(P&D=Plug & Display)

I have an opinion on what happens between the LCD and the graphics card to cause the permanent power save state with the LCD.  The end result is the the EDID (LCD identification data) which is stored in flash memory inside the LCD is corrupted.  Not all of it mind you, just the eight byte header that confirms that EDID data is being sent to the graphics card.  The DVI recover utility reads out the EDID data from the LCD, fixes the 8 byte header, and rewrites the EDID data back to the LCD.  If the EDID data header is corrupted in the LCD, the graphics driver will not recognize the LCD as a compliant display and will not support it over the DVI interface.

How the EDID data in the LCD gets corrupted is a more difficult question to answer.  I speculate that the electrical characteristics of the DVI interface as implemented on the GeForce FX 5200 (nVidia NV34) chip are marginal with respect to the Dell LCDs.  Note that the DVI interface is essentially a high speed serial interface.  In addition to the 3 (RGB) color channels, there is a control channel between the graphics card and the LCD.  If the electrical signal levels and/or timings are near the specification limits, then any small interference can cause a control channel command to be mis-interpreted.  It is my opinion that such an event occurs causing the EDID data to be partially erased in the LCD.  The nV34 chip used on the FX 5200 cards is the first chip from nVidia to use the on-chip T.M.D.S. transceivers.  (TMDS is a trademark of Silicon Image and refers to their implementation of an LVDS channel.  LVDS=Low Voltage Differential Signaling).  Previous nVidia chips supporting DVI required the use of an additional LVDS interface chip on the graphics card.

An updated display driver may be able to restore some DVI interface reliability by altering timing, etc.  That is why you must both update the driver and reprogram the EDID to regain DVI functionality.

I realize this is pure speculation and does not explain all of the failure modes described in this forum.  It does, however, match my experience with my 1900FP LCD and FX 5200 graphics card.  I also seen this type interface issue with equipment i design at work.  That is to say, I have made this blunder myself.

I hope this was helpful.  Thanks for listening.

Alan Olson

I am having the same problem. 17" Dell digital flat panel monitor won't display digital on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (Dell) adapter. Dell has replaced everything, one piece at a time.

Nothing - just a black screen during boot. Analog mode works fine.

I notice the Monitor is listed as "Dell 1703FP (Analog)" in Win XP Pro control panel and display properties etc. For comparison, another computer I have access to at work lists the monitor as simply "Plug-n-Play"  - it is an older digital FP monitor with a different video board.

Notice that the monitor is listed as ANALOG only.

Does Widows XP simply have the wrong monitor type installed? I have asked Dell email support about this but the simply ignore the question.

I have tried to use the add hardware function to add a generic "Plug-n-play" monitor but it dead ends and I never get the option.

What about removing the monitor in windows xp and re-booting to let it find and reinstall the monitor again? I am hesitant since, the way things have been going, I would end up with no diaplay at all.  

Andrew

Again, I'm no expert.  My experience with the FX 5200 is that if both the analog and digital cable are plugged in to a non-corrupted LCD, video only appears on the VGA connector.  I have not tried the cloned mode in nView.  This may be a characteristic of my display driver, however.  If the EDID is corrupt in the LCD under this scenario, I would expect only VGA output.  With the nView mode set to a single display, I would expect video on only one display channel (VGA or DVI).

Glad you enjoyed the post.

Alan Olson

Alan,

Great post!  Extremely insightfull!  Let me throw this on ya'!  After I recovered my DVI feed the other day, and before I enabled both the DVI and the analog feed simultaneously, when I had both cables hooked up, I got the analog input of my 1703FP showing as being in power save mode!  What do you think that means and how does it fit in with your theory of what happens with the DVI input when the EDID is corrupted?

amajamar

Dimension 8300
2.8 G Pentium 4
XP Professional
GeForce4 MX 440
512 MB
120 GB
200 GB secondary drive
1703FP display