XP doesn't support my Sylvania F74 17" monitor!!

[daldous]

XP doesn't support my Sylvania F74 17" monitor!!

They say the driver is not digitally signed. When it searches for the "best driver" it defaults to PNP VGA Monitor and limits my pixels to 800X600. On Win98se I normally used 1080X768 and had available a level or two beyond that.

I have searched the web and found Sylvania (and Phillips) drivers supposedly for XP but any I have found are not "digitally signed" and XP imposes the limitation.

How can I get more pixels?

Thanks,

daldous

 

[bcastner]

right-click My Computer, Properties, Hardware, Driver Signing, and click to "Warn" each time a non-digitally signed driver is presented for installation.

Then install it, accepting the warning that it is not digitally signed.

In order for a driver to obtain a digital certificate it has to go through lots of certification testing by Microsoft. Many drivers when new are not yet certified, but perfectly acceptable. Some devices have such small production runs that their drivers are never submitted to MS for certification due to the expense.

Change the behavior to warn. I regularly accept unsigned drivers from reputable manufacturers.

 

[daldous]

Thanks for the help. It turns out the driver signing was already selected to "warn" and I have been able to "force" install the Sylvania driver version 3.10.0.0 (which under Win98se provided for higher pixel rates than 800X600). The driver does seem to install okay per your message.

I don't understand why XP "limits" the monitor to 800X600 when WIN98se allowed 1024x768 and a couple more even higher rates. I am using the same Mboard, video card, monitor and monitor driver! The only thing different is XP itself.

I am new to XP (obviously), is there some other reason in XP, other than the fact that the driver is not digitally signed that may limit the pixel rate?

I can't believe that software would be designed to make other manufacturer's hardware obsolete (yeah, right)!!

Thanks again,

daldous

 

[bcastner]

Several thoughts:

1. It is possible MultiRes would work. It is a nifty freeware utility and has been around for quite a while.

Documentation:

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/multires.htm

Download:

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/

2. Doug Knox's tip:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_userdisplay.htm

3. A third-party utility to do this; "Display Resolution Manager":

http://www.webattack.com/Shareware/system/swpowertools.shtml