Just upgraded to WinXP and found my first major nuisance. While my previous setup with Windows 2000 worked fine with two monitors, XP will recognize my secondary video card but cannot or will not enable it.
The primary (AGP) card is an ATI All-in-Wonder 128, the secondary is an ATI Rage Pro (actually an Xpert@Play 98, but the same chipset). If I set my motherboard bios to recognize the PCI card as primary, I can run with two monitors, but then lose all the TV tuner capabilities of the AIW 128. Unacceptable.
The worst case would be having to buy a more up-to-date PCI video card to act as secondary (well, actually, the worst case would require replacing the AIW 128 and/or motherboard, a new Soyo Dragon+).
Seeing as I don’t feel like spending any more dough, is anyone else running a dual-monitor setup under WinXP and if so, did you encounter and solve any problems?
My friend uses a big expensive card to have 4 simultaneous monitors hooked up to one desktop (it was like $1200) and he’s had the card for at least 3 or 4 years now. He was pretty amazed that XP picked the card up right away and he had to just reset the viewing settings (like which monitor was #1, etc), no driver installation or anything.
If you’re interested in what card this is, I can get the info, but I don’t think this is exactly what you’re trying to do…is it?
I’m running a Matrox G-450 dual card and XP picked it up with no problems. Admittedly, this wasn’t what you’re looking for, either, but dual monitor cards are cheap these days (according to pricewatch you can get an ATI Radeon VE 32MB dual card for about $50 shipped), and in my experience (at least with Win2K) video performance on both monitors is much worse with two discrete video cards than with one card designed for it.
Thanks. I knew about dual-monitor cards, I just didn’t want to remove my perfectly good AGP card. Annoyingly, Win2000 even ran with three video cards for a time, but I had to yank one to make room for a faxmodem. My recent purchase of a Dragon+ motherboard was specifically to have lots of free PCI slots so I could rig multiple monitors, if only the damned XP would use the cards.
Sigh.
ATI won’t provide a WinXP driver for my older cards, claiming the driver included on the WinXP disk will work. It doesn’t, of course. So I’ll have to go shopping or wait until XP service pack 1, I guess.
The main decision would be, do I replace my AGP card with a dual-monitor model with similar function (and, annoyingly, ATI doesn’t seem to produce a card that can use two monitors; just a monitor and a TV) or do I buy a new PCI video card just to act as my secondary?
Losing my All-In-Wonder’s television capability would be a major nuisance, though not a crippling one. ATI doesn’t yet produce a true dual-monitor card with a tuner. I suppose I could get an AGP dual monitor display card and a TV tuner, or use my Pinnacle 500+ to watch TV (or just put a small television on my desk, but that seems so low-tech).
The single cheapest solution I can find so far is just to get a recent but inexpensive PCI video card to act as secondary.
In a nutshell, in case you can’t browse to it, while the ATI might not be supported by Microsoft, try removing your AGP card and setting up your BIOS (if able) to work with the PCI only. XP boots and will install the PCI drivers. Shut down and re-add the AGP card, both will be seen. Possibly leave the BIOS alone, just set AGP as primary in windows (only ‘bad’ effect is the Windows Splash Sreen is on the PCI side on boot).
I tried juggling the primary video card settings in the BIOS again, changing them from AGP to PCI. While this allows me to run both monitors, the specialized TV functions on the (AGP) All-in-Wonder stubbornly refuse to work if it is not the primary, and no amount of screwing around with the Windows XP settings will encourage it to change its mind.
I’ve started looking for a PCI-based video card with dual-monitor support. If I can make that work as my secondary, I’ll get my second and third monitors. I’ll keep the board posted.
For what it’s worth, you might wish to avoid dual-head cards. I do, and I’ve run many multimon systems with windows 2000 and xp. The reason is that many dual-head cards (such as the G450 under win2k last time I tried it) perform a driver-level trick to appear as a single big monitor to the OS, which means that when you bring up the display properties, your resolution is set to 2560x1024 or something, rather than having two monitors at 1280x1024. This causes several problems, the most annoying being that any software that pops up a centered dialog ends up plopping the dialog right on the border between the two monitors. It also means that when you maximize a window it covers both monitors, which isn’t usually what i want. You also lose the ability to set the monitors’ resolutions and positions independent from each other in most cases.
That said, if the driver is written correctly, the dualhead card will show up as two seperate display devices. I just don’t know which manufacturers you can count on to write their drivers this way.
I’m currently running an XP pro setup with an AGP geforce2 and a PCI 3dlabs card, no problem, so in general, that type of thing should work. It sounds like you just have a strange issue with one or both of your particular cards. I assume you have noticed this, but XP did add a checkbox in the display properties control panel which says “extend my windows desktop onto this device” or something, which you have to check for each extra video card. I gather that if you don’t check that, software can still explicitly make use of the device if it knows to look for it (i.e. video editing software that uses a dedicated preview monitor or somesuch, I’m guessing), but windows cannot be dragged onto it and it generally appears to be dead.
The Home version of XP might still be using the antiquated Win9x support for dual moniters which means that your 2ndary card MUST have BIOS level support for dual moniters. In win2k, you could trick your BIOS into thinking your Primary card was your secondary and then have Win2k switch them over in the OS.
I came across these checkboxes when I first set up a dual-display computer with Win2000. The exist in WinXP, but the option I would need the most, the one that decides which video card is the primary, does not work properly in WinXP.
As it stands, I’ll have to wait for an XP update or go hunting around for a newer PCI video card to act as secondary. In the meantime, I’ll have to stay single.