I have upgraded my Geforce 6800, and now I cannot, for the life of me, find where to expand the display to use the entire widescreen capability of my 21"W monitor.

So, I figured well maybe I need to upgrade my Bios. Upon checking, I realize that I have A03, which is, of course, way behind the A08. But, now, for the life of me, I cannot download the file. I keep getting a time-out message. Any ideas? Is this such a busy download site that it is overloading the server? That would be ridiculous, given that this is, after all, a way to upgrade computer components. If so, maybe Dell needs to upgrade. Anyway, I digress......

Again, any clues as to how to download the latest Bios driver? I'm getting rather frustrated.

TIA
Di

Dimension 8400 with assorted sound and video goodies.

Dabell,  click here for the A08 download for the 8400 model.  I just tried it and it was working good as of this time and date.

As for the widescreen..... have you tried right clicking your mouse on a blank spot on the desktop to bring up the Display Properties and then choose the Settings tab to bring up your graphics options?

Majestic, thanks for the response. When I followed the link you posted, it immediately allowed me to download the Bios upgrade. Interesting, as that is what I had been trying to do all day. Anyway, I downloaded it, and my bios is now upgraded.

As for my monitor settings, I'm still baffled. Of course, I did the right click, properties, settings, Geforce, etc. I still, cannot for the life of me figure out how to adjust the settings to accommodate my wide screen. I used to be able to coulc. Not anymore. I have been all over my computer, via the windows links, to display settings, video cards, admin services, device drivers, whatever, but to no avail. Unless you have any suggestions, I'll go to the appropriate forum to get some help.

Again, thanks for your help.

Di

I cannot get it either..  Server cannot be found, they (DELL) are off for the Holidays.

I downloaded/updated BIOS A08 with no problems. Seems to have an added feature for DMA 3 or DMA 5 access when the parallel port is set to ECP. Haven't explored that yet for my HP LaserJet.

Can I assume you uninstalled the old video driver and installed the driver for the new geForce 6800 card?

Go Settings tab in Display control panel, click Advanced button. Now click Monitor tab. Make sure your display is correctly identified there by make/model number. If not, be sure the correct monitor driver is installed.

Now click geForce 6800 tab. If the tab doesn't exist, then the video driver hasn't been installed correctly. If it exists, you should be able to set various display properties from there. Click in the middle of geForce 6800 page if the options don't appear in a "pinned" list at the left side.

And while you're there, click on Tools in the pinned list and check the box so the nvidia icon appears on the taskbar. That makes it must easier to access/change the 6800's settings on the fly.

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 12-24-2005 08:19 PM

Thank you, RoHe for your reply.

Yes, I did uninstall the old driver first. However, when I did it again this morning, after reading your message, it seemed to install differently. I don't remember the exact stuff, but it was waiting for replies from me. I should have written it down, but I was excited thinking that maybe now it would work well. I was wrong. Same ol' same ol'

Yup, I checked the monitor, and it is right.

OK So there you have it. I have no Tools option in the pinned list. As you can see from this desktop shot I uploaded to my photo site, http://www.pbase.com/di/image/53937356 , for some reason I'm not getting something installed properly, and I just don't know why. And, in fact, I used to have the nvidia box checked so that I could access it easily. Any suggestions? I'm hitting the wall, here.

BTW, Merry Xmas.

Di,
I've got a lot more options than shown in your link. Whose version of nvidia driver do you have? You might want to go to nvidia.com and download their v77.77. There's a later v81.95 (if I remember correctly) but that one was really buggy on my 8400 with XPpro SP2 and 6800 card installed by Dell, so I had to revert to the earlier one.

Then go to omegadrivers.net and download his free Driver Cleaner 3. Use Add/Remove to remove the existing driver. Follow up by running Driver Cleaner 3 using the "nvidia filter" to get rid of some bits of nvidia driver that always get left behind (usually 4-5 files and a folder). Now turn off your antiviral software completely and install new driver (see http://www.nvidia.com/object/driver_installation_hints.html_)

See if all the options show up now.

Happy holidays to you too.
Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 12-25-2005 01:18 PM

Ron,

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.

Just so you know, I did download the Nvidia v81.98, but that's where my troubles started. Those bums! How the heck can they release a buggy driver. Talk about counterproductive.

I followed your advice, step by step, combined of course with the step-by-steps that comes with Driver Cleaner. I downloaded the Pro version instead of DC3, as they said it was a greatly improved upgrade. Can't argue with that. It all worked beautifully. I now have all the options and bells and whistles that should come with an nvidia driver.

You just made my day. :-)

Di,
My Christmas present to you. :) But you didn't say which version of nvidia driver you installed or if you ever solved your original problem with the wide screen monitor.

And getting back to the title of this thread, has anybody noticed longer/delayed boot up times with BIOS A08 on their 8400? Seems like XP is lagging since I flashed the update. No extra/unusual processes are running according to Task Manager, but it's taking more than 2 minutes before the icons appear in the system tray. Never took that long before. But once they appear, everything seems to running OK. Haven't added any new software since the flash. I may flash back to A07 to see if I can confirm the difference.

Ron