Help in enabling 1920x1080 res w/ GeForce FX Go 5200 64MB on a p25-s607

[Guest kghastie]

Hi - any help is this area would be greatly appreciated. I have spent most of the day doing research and trying out the modded drivers here: =xp"]Laptopvideo2go Search Page. With no luck. The closest I got was the latest WHQL one (174.74), which was the only one to allow me to use 1920x1080, my only goal. However, I got repeated BSODs after a few mins/hours. None of the others I tried enabled 1920x1080, and many left my nVidia driver with a yellow exclamation mark in device manager. I also tried 174.80, 174.70, 174.93, and a couple of others I think.

Any advice on either what version I should use that would actually be stable on my Toshiba p25-s607, or on how I could just manually mod a different working version to allow 1920x1080? By the way, I'm not too concerned about performance, since I am not really gaming on this old machine, but I would like to utilize the native res on my new monitor, which is 16x9.

Thanks a lot to all on the forum!

I believe the device is DEV_0324&SUBSYS_FF001179

I believe the graphics carde is an nVidia GeForce FX Go5200 64MB.

Win XP 32-bit

Toshiba p25-s607

kghastie

[LSudlow]

Try this driver, and be sure to use the modded inf. (The link to the inf is next to the link to the driver.)

[Guest kghastie]

Try this driver, and be sure to use the modded inf. (The link to the inf is next to the link to the driver.)

Awesome, LSudlow! So far so good... I am at 1920x1080 as we speak! But I'll be wary of BSODs for the next couple of days....

The only thing a bit worrisome is that they laptop screen is gray now when in single-view mode on the monitor. When it switches to that mode from a mode where it is displaying something, the gray kind of "melts in" (for lack of a better word), in a not very healthy looking kind of way :) Is that to be expected, or should I be worried? Not really a problem since I only need 1 display at a time. However, the only other time I saw this gray screen was with the first driver I tried (174.74) and that's the one that kept blue-screening.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the help. I'm curious as to why you recommended that driver specifically, especially since it does not show up on this page: =xp"]http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers?dev=0324⊂=FF001179&whql=0〈=0&orderby=version&dir=desc&os=&os[]=xp

[LSudlow]

For the FX series cards, the 169.xx drivers perform better than the 17x.xx drivers. Yours is the newest driver we have with a modded inf. I'm glad it's working.

See if you can correct the grayness with the nvidia control panel's color controls, or perhaps a different monitor driver or refresh rate. If not, there may be a hardware problem. If you google "toshiba laptop gray screen" you'll find you aren't alone.

Good luck with it!

[Guest kghastie]

Hi. Unfortunately, I did get 2 BSODs with the new driver, both regarding nv4_mini.sys :) I did try googling regarding the gray screen, but was unable to find much regarding my more specific situation. I should probably clarify some things about the gray screen and BSOD:

1. It fades in starting from one of the corners, almost like I've seen when there's been water damage
   
2. Once it has faded in, it is a flat, solid, medium-to-light-gray color. There are no horizontal or vertical lines, or any coloring or variation at all.
   
3. The issue goes away if I uninstall the driver or change resolutions to something other than 1920x1080.
   
4. I am not sure whether the BSOD will occur if I keep the 169 driver have the resolution set to something different.
   
5. This happens with the 169.61 and 174.74 only (out of the ones I've tried). Of course, these are the only two that have allowed for a 1920x1080 res on the external monitor.
   
6. I can't just disable the laptop monitor. I have the nvidia software set to single display, but I still see the gray screen.
   
7. When I switch to Dualview, both screens look fine, but I am unable to set the external monitor to be the primary display (this has always been a problem).
   

I am trying leaving it on Dualview for a while to see if it still blue screens, but either way, it doesn't fix my issue.

Any other ideas?

Thanks!

[LSudlow]

I hate to say it, but it sounds very much like a hardware problem. Since the LCD works fine when in Dual View mode, it's probably with the video controller on your Go5200. Fortunately, you should be able to find a replacement video card for a pretty low cost.

For now, I agree you should just stay in Dual View. Better yet, try Clone Mode. If that works, it uses less of your graphic resources than Dual View does and should perform better. There's no problem with staying in Clone Mode (or Dual View) perpetually, if you aren't comfortable digging into the guts of your laptop.

[kghastie]

I hate to say it, but it sounds very much like a hardware problem. Since the LCD works fine when in Dual View mode, it's probably with the video controller on your Go5200.

...

For now, I agree you should just stay in Dual View. Better yet, try Clone Mode.

Yeah, I understand why it would sound like hardware, but I haven't had this issue at any point over the last 5 yrs until I started trying to install modded drivers two days ago. Of course, it's possible I hosed the hardware BY using the modded drivers, but it at least seems like there must be a causal relationship there between the software and the gray screen.

I'd be fine with using Clone Mode or Dual View, except that the maximum res it allows for both monitors is the max res of my laptop screen (1440x900) (perhaps this is because it won't accept my external monitor as the primary display).

UPDATE: I finally somehow was able to have it accept the external display as the primary display, and set it to 1920x1080. The laptop monitor looks fine... until the screensaver kicks on. Any time the screen tries to blank, it seems, is when it gets a gray screen. When my picasa screensaver comes on it only blinks to gray for a second (probably because the monitor blanks itself for a second before the screensaver starts). Also, if I let the screensaver run for 30 min and the Toshiba power settings trigger the display to turn off, I get the gray screen.

So it seems that the 3 different ways in which I get the gray screen (1. when set to single-display: monitor, 2. switching on the screensaver, and 3. blanking due to the power settings) all have this in common: the software is trying to shut OFF the screen...

[LSudlow]

Excellent detective work on your part. There are a few things in the modded inf you can try. Keep a backup of the modded inf, then go into the [nv_SoftwareDeviceSettings] section, change the following things, and reinstall. Don't change them all at once - maybe a few at a time. If you find a group of changes that works, you can narrow it down:

Start with this one:

change EnableBrightnessControl to 0

If that doesn't work:

1. Comment out the NV_R&T lines

2. Change DevSwitchsupressMask to 5

3. Change BandwidthFactor to 4

4. Change EnablePowerMizer to 0

5. Change ModesetBlankDelay to 0

EnableBrightnessControl seems like the most likely one to me, to change that and reinstall before you try the others. And don't worry - there's nothing here that will hurt your laptop. It's just a question of finding a setting that works (assuming it's not a hardware problem).

Good luck!

[kghastie]

There are a few things in the modded inf you can try.

Perfect, thanks! I'll try poking around with these settings today. Do I need to restart with each change? All of this would be much easier without that 4 minute delay each time I attempt something... :)

Also, no BSODs thus far with the auto-off disabled.

[Guest kghastie]

So this surprised me. Under devices, the nvidia driver shows what I would expect after installing the 169.61 driver:

Date: 1/15/2008

Version: 6.14.11.6961

But when I went to modify the inf file at C:\Windows\inf\nv4_disp.inf, it is much smaller than the modded inf that came with the 169.61 driver. I opened it and saw this:

DriverVer = 04/07/2004, 5.6.7.3

I'm pretty sure I followed the correct installation instructions (extract 16961.exe, copy modded inf file into the 16961 dir, choose Have Disk and point to nv4_disp.inf in the 16961 dir)... Going to try rebooting right now.

I'm I fundamentally misunderstanding something that goes on in the driver installation process? I would expect the inf file from the directory i installed from to match the one in c:\windows\inf.... It's possible I rolled back the driver (the 5.6.7.3 inf matches the original inf file I backed up before I started this whole modded driver hunt), but wouldn't that result in the device listing the old driver version? I just did another restart to make sure something wasn't in a wonky state, and I see the same thing...

At any rate I will still try changing those settings you mentioned in the current .inf file - the one in c:\windows\inf\nv4_disp.inf. Is that the right place? I can edit in place?

[Guest kghastie]

At any rate I will still try changing those settings you mentioned in the current .inf file - the one in c:\windows\inf\nv4_disp.inf. Is that the right place? I can edit in place?

Ah, I think it is oem41.inf that I need to modify? I have oem1 thru oem41.inf in the windows\inf directory. oem41.inf matches the modded inf file for 169.61. And I seem to remember oem41.inf being mapped to the nvidia device somewhere - can't remember where I was that I saw it....

[LSudlow]

It's this inf. Use it to replace the one that comes with the driver. If it's not the one you used in the first place, this alone may fix your problem. If not, then try the fixes I suggested. If those don't help, I have some other ideas up my sleeve.

http://laptopvideo2go.com/infs/165series/16961/nv4_disp.inf

[Guest kghastie]

It's this inf. Use it to replace the one that comes with the driver. If it's not the one you used in the first place, this alone may fix your problem. If not, then try the fixes I suggested. If those don't help, I have some other ideas up my sleeve.

http://laptopvideo2go.com/infs/165series/16961/nv4_disp.inf

Yeah, that's the same as the modded one from the first link that you posted, I believe. Tried that one originally. I have tried a few of your suggestions (by modifying the inf in the system folder directly, not by reinstalling, btw, not sure if that works or not). I still saw a gray screen, and have a gray screen now with all of those settings changed as you suggested. The only difference was that one was PowerMizerEnabled instead of EnablePowerMizer and ModesetBlankDelay was set to 1 but already commented out (I uncommented it and set it to 0 as suggested).

Anyway with those settings, I see the gray screen when the power management powers down the screen, but after 30 mins the screen actually went black. I can't figure out what is set to 30 mins, as the screensaver is set to 60min and the power settings are set to shut off the screen after 1 min (for quick testing). The only thing I can find that is set to 30 min is the hard drive spindown, which obviously shouldn't be related. Anyway, I'll leave it up and running as is overnight and see if it blue screens on me....

(By the way, please let me know if modifying the inf file in place is useless :) )

[LSudlow]

Are you set to go into standby or hibernate at 30 minutes?

Unfortunately, yes, changing the inf in place doesn't do anything. The inf is what the installer uses to control the registry settings when you install the driver. It's slow, but the only way to experiment is to modify the inf and then reinstall. (Something we at this site have become far too accustomed to doing.)

By the way, at some point (soon), it would be a good idea to uninstall the driver completely (in the Windows Control Panel), then reinstall - just to clear out any garbage settings that might be in your registry mucking things up.

[kghastie]

Hey, I just wanted you to know that I have had success! At least it appears so. After uninstalling any old nvidia drivers in Safe Mode and then reinstalling the modded inf with your 5 additional tweaks, I am at 1920x1080 and have not had any BSODs. The monitor does blink quite often, so I might try again without the 5 additional tweaks (I suspect it was the uninstall that was the key factor).

The only other thing I have been experiencing which may or may not be related is several 60 second forced restarts because an RPC call had failed (i.e. a windows alert pops up with a 60 second countdown and it does not seem to be closable or cancellable). I am not sure what exactly this is related to, but if I trace it back to the nvidia drivers I'll post something here.

Anyway thanks a lot! I think I'm on the right track!

[LSudlow]

Thanks for the update - that's great news!

As far as the additional tweaks go, I'd undo the R&T changes but keep the others where I suggested. Those changes are a good fit the Go5200. Especially, keep EnableBrightnessControl at 0.

I don't think the forced restarts are related to the driver installation, but if you find out differently, please let me know.

Thanks, and good luck with it!