Nov 21, 2005

So, I just hooked up a second 20 inch monitor to my rig, and I must say I don’t know how I ever lived without it!

Using Photoshop is SO much easier when you can actually SEE what you are doing. All my palettes go on the second monitor, and I get a full view of the doc.

Seeing web pages in different resolutions is also easy – just set up the second monitor for whatever target resolution you want, and with the flick of a mouse you know exactly what your page looks like. No more jumping back and forth with your own monitor to 1024×768 or GASP 800×600. In fact, if you REALLY want to get crazy, you can set your main monitor to the target res, and then use the extra real estate from monitor 2 to make up for the lack of space. This way, you are designing with the proper constraints from the get go…

Also, web surfing is great this way – ever looking up 2 things at once and want to compare information? BAM – one page on one monitor, one page on another!

Set up photo slide show for monitor 2 when you are using it – neat way to see all your memories while you work!

I did have some challenges getting it up and running though, which frankly surprised me. I’m using a GEFORCE 6800 with 128 MB of RAM, so had plenty of buffer to run both at 1280×1024. But when I booted Windows with both connected, and “activated” monitor 2, I would get a hang, and then a hard crash reset of the machine. NOT GOOD. If I booted without the two monitors, and connected the second after the machine was up and running, I could get a “Horizontal Span” working with ForceWARE from NVIDIA, but DualView mode would crash just like Windows.

I started to suspect a power issue because of the hard boot, but I’ve got a 510W Antec TrueBlue power supply in the puppy. I was hoping it wasn’t that, because the next step up is a 850W power supply from Power PC and Cooling… FOR $400!!! All my drivers were up to date though, so what else could it be? I was even on a completely fresh install of WinXP, so it couldn’t have been a moldy OS that was the problem.

Anyway, I decided to jump off the deep end, and ring up customer support for eVGA, the MFG of my Video card. I immediately put through to someone who took my name and number and said that I would be called back in 30 minutes or less.

Well, having no choice, I very skeptically gave him my info, and then waited for the call. I was pleasantly surprised when I actually got the call back, and a helpful person was on the other end of the phone.

He immediately asked me about the power supply – SEE, I wasn’t nuts – but then dismissed it given the size of the supply. Next he asked about the drivers – par for the course, so far – and I told him that I was up to date with the latest ForceWare stuff from NVIDIA. He surprised me again by recommending that I rollback to the 77.77 version of the drivers, which I could get from their site.

He said boot into safe mode and uninstall the current drivers with the Add / Remove Programs control panel, and then use a utility called Driver Cleaner, from www.drivercleaner.net to really clean it all out. Then, boot normally and install the 77.77 drivers.

I really didn’t think all this was going to work, but in fact it worked great.

My only concern now is the length of time that I can continue to use these drivers that are 3 revs old. Eventually there will be a game that won’t work well with them, and I’ll need an update.

If they don’t release and update soon that will work for me, I’m going to be facing a major dilemma: Dual Monitor Goodness or New Game Nirvana?

Time will tell…