Dell Inspiron 1000 on Widescreen monitor

Hi

A friend of mine has a dell inspiron 1000 laptop but the screen bust on him a few weeks ago; instead of forking out to get the screen fixed it was suggested to use a monitor connected to the laptop.

He recently purchased a videoseven 19" widescreen monitor, with max resolution of 1440X900, connecting the monitor to the VGA port on the back of the monitor it relayed the image on his laptop to the monitor and filled the entire screen.
The only thing is, it would be great if it is possible to set the resolution on the laptop to 1440X900 so that the image which is relayed through to the monitor is the correct resolution for the monitor. At present the max resolution which can be selected is 1024 x 768. I tried installing drivers from the cd which was supplied with the monitor but all what appears to be on the disc is pdf manuals in various languages.

Is it at all possible to set the graphics to a display of 1440X900 and have it so the only display being used is the monitor and the display on the laptop is disabled. Perhaps the use of another monitor driver or a generic monitor driver will allow a resolution of 1440X900 to be set.


Any help is much appreciated.

Welcome to Windrives djphatic

Screen resolution is not depended purely on the monitor... it is also dependent on what the video card can do - can you post what graphics card you laptop is using?

hi

all i know is that the laptop uses a SIS M650 chipset, which im guessing it uses for the graphics card as well.

It is the M650 graphics and according to the limited specs I have found for this chipset, you are at max resolution - sorry.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by djphatic

Hi

A friend of mine has a dell inspiron 1000 laptop but the screen bust on him a few weeks ago; instead of forking out to get the screen fixed it was suggested to use a monitor connected to the laptop.

He recently purchased a videoseven 19" widescreen monitor, with max resolution of 1440X900, connecting the monitor to the VGA port on the back of the monitor it relayed the image on his laptop to the monitor and filled the entire screen.
The only thing is, it would be great if it is possible to set the resolution on the laptop to 1440X900 so that the image which is relayed through to the monitor is the correct resolution for the monitor. At present the max resolution which can be selected is 1024 x 768. I tried installing drivers from the cd which was supplied with the monitor but all what appears to be on the disc is pdf manuals in various languages.

Is it at all possible to set the graphics to a display of 1440X900 and have it so the only display being used is the monitor and the display on the laptop is disabled. Perhaps the use of another monitor driver or a generic monitor driver will allow a resolution of 1440X900 to be set.


Any help is much appreciated.

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Your monitor is producing its highest resolution, you will have to repair the laptops screen to obtain 1440X900

i found this http://www.sis.com/support/support_faqs_4.htm

though I have yet to try it on the laptop

Quote:

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Originally Posted by djphatic

i found this http://www.sis.com/support/support_faqs_4.htm

though I have yet to try it on the laptop

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The chipset is a mobile one so don't be surprised if the drivers refuse to install. Did you check at Dell for an updated driver?

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Originally Posted by daffy86

An exterior monitor can only run as high as its limits....your friends lappy screen is designed to run higher limits.

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Quote:

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He recently purchased a videoseven 19" widescreen monitor, with max resolution of 1440X900,

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I really doubt the laptop had a 19 inch flatscreen monitor..If so I would love to have one. He installed an external monitor capable of 1440x900..the laptop max resolution is 1024x768. You are looking at it backwards

Quote:

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Originally Posted by daffy86

Where your confused Lappy monitors are not the same as CRT monitors.

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Where you're confused..the Videoseven 19 inch widescreen isn't a CRT monitor..it's a TFT Flatscreen
and anyway..1024x768 is the number of pixels sent to the screen. Works on both crt and flatscreen. 1024 dots in 768 lines, etc.

no way you will ever get that resolution from that laptop.

Err guys, I think I already said that... but he has found a driver that may install and we all know it can't hurt to try.

The video card is capable of supporting 2048x1536 @32bpp

you currently have the screen set to "clone" wich means that the image displayed on the internal display will also show on the external, hence you are restricted to the internal display's resolution (1024x768).

If you have installed the dell drivers, you should have a "sis" symbol in your task bar. Use that to have the system detect the external monitor and set the resolution.

click the icon, display properties then Driver mode Settings.

You should be able to set things there.

The other tip that may work, there should be a reed switch (Detects if the LCD is closed or open on the notebook) Try pushing it in to make the computer think the lid is closed, it will usualy default to the external monitor, this *should* give you unrestricted resolution setting.

I read that that comp had 512 mb ram (it's max) and that the graphics chip used 64 mb of that, and that 1024 x 768 was the 'native' resolution.

Given those figures, I would wonder that it could get much better than the native and still have the comp operate anyway near 'good'.

I think at 1600x1200 and 16 million colors, you only need 8 mb of video ram to operate..so the capability of the video controller is the only limiting factor here.

Thanks for your replies

So far i havent been able to get any sort of widescreen resolution.
Ive updated the drivers/software to 3.73 from the SiS website using the UniVGA3 drivers and updated the Vbios to 2.16.02, this was from the dell website as I couldnt find any Vbios update on its own which would update to 2.28.00 or higher.

I am able to disable the laptop display screen using the SiS Utilities; though the max resolution I can select when the primary monitor is set to CRT is 1280x1024.
When set to LCD it only goes to 1024x768.

Is it possible to get just the vbios update from another set of laptop drivers which uses the SiS M650 which would take it to 2.28.00 or higher. Maybe this will allow me to be able to select a resolution of 1440x900 or just any widescreen resolution for that matter.

I dont know where the reed switch is to make it think the screen is closed, if I just close the screen the laptop goes into sleep mode.

Im really just looking to set the display to any widescreen resolution now, even if it is not the maximum of the monitor as it is annoying having screwed up text.

Any help is much appreciated.

Dj, I think by now you pretty much know the answer to your question. All the discussion about maximum resolution for your video adapter, etc. is beside the point. The bottom line is that if your driver and video BIOS can't support a specific resolution, you just can't choose it.

Look, it's really doubtful that a generic VBIOS update or one from another machine would work on your friend's Dell. This isn't like a video driver where it is pretty simple (usually!) to recover from a bad driver, a problem with the video BIOS could result in a non-functional laptop.

Your buddy just made a bad decision when he bought the display. Unfortunately things like this happen if you aren't very careful about doing research before buying.