Resolution changes when I close laptop lid.

[Ploper001]

Hi all,

I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 with an ATI Radeon Mobility X1300 graphics card. Up to now I've been using desktop Radeon drivers (using the ATI Mobility Modder .NET program to allow them to install on my laptop) because the Mobility Radeon section on the ATI website just tells you to go to your laptop's manufacurer's website and Dell's drivers are two years old. Anyway, for the most recent drivers, this Mobility Modder doesn't work. I noticed though that ATI actually provide Mobility Radeon drivers now so I didn't need it. I was right...apart from the fact I now have a new problem.

Since the driver update, whenever I close my laptop lid and open it again, all of the icons on my desktop and open windows move, as though the resolution has been reduced. I usually use 1280x800 and it seems like the resoution is being changed to something like 1024x768 when I close the lid and back to 1280x800 again when I open it.

I've heard of a few fixes. One of them involves changing your external monitor resolution to match your built-in screen's resolution. However, I can't do this without actually attaching a monitor first and I haven't got any access to a monitor at the moment. The second fix apparently always works: it involves changing a registry key (LidBehavior) from "11" to "10". However, this only applies to nVidia cards, so again, this is useless to me. The third fix is to set your laptop do "do nothing" when the lid is closed as opposed to "suspend" or "shut down". My laptop has always been set to "do nothing" on lid closure and I still have the problem.

Does anyone know of anything I can try to resolve this problem aside from rolling back the drivers?

Thanks.

 

[vacunita]

Have you tried Downloading Ati's tool and have it download the correct driver:

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=xp/mobility-xp

Assuming this is of course Windows XP.

If not have you tried going into BIOS and looking for
something that may alter the behavior in display settings?



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Ploper001]

Dell's BIOSs are notoriously rubbish for having next to no options, including nothing useful about the video card unfortunately.

I just tried the the verifier - it says I need to contact my laptop manufacturer for drivers.

Incidentally, the drivers I installed (8.9) aren't even the latest version any more. They update quite regularly it seems...I'll try to install 8.10 later on. I doubt it'll fix the problem but it's worth a try I guess.

 

[vacunita]

I did find another option which is totally Graphics card independent.

Its Microsoft's way of addressing the issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945459

It applies to Vista, but since you haven't actually told us what OS you are using, I'm just putting out solutions that look like they work regardless of OS.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Ploper001]

Sorry, I always miss out on the basic stuff when writing long posts . I'm using Windows XP Professional SP3.

I did have a look at that solution but there is no Task Scheduler Library so it must only apply to Vista.