XP only displaying on TV, not monitor

[doveman]

So my brother's just moved and after connecting his PC back up, he can't get Windows to display on his LCD VGA monitor. The Nvidia graphics card (FX5600 I think) has a composite TV output and that's working so he can see the XP desktop on his CRT TV but that's the other side of the room so tricky for him to do much using that.

I got him to boot into Safe Mode and still it only displayed on the TV. He managed to right-click the desktop and click properties and could see two monitors, with only one enabled but he was unable to change this being in Safe Mode. After rebooting it was still only on the TV and he right-clicked on the desktop and there was an Nvidia option he selected but apparently that only gave him some options for the TV settings.

The monitor works fine as the PC displays POST and the "Windows needs to check your drives" screen OK, it's just once Windows has booted he has no picture. In Safe Mode, I got him to check Device Manager and as well as the Nvidia driver there's the LogMeIn mirror driver and a Mirage driver (I think we installed that for VNC) but they've been installed for ages and it was working fine before the move.

I installed a backup XP on there for him, so he's currently trying booting to that to see if that displays on the monitor. If not, I've told him to remove the graphics card and plug into the onboard VGA. Even if that works, it won't have all his software installed and he hasn't got his Internet connected yet, so he'll want to get the other Windows working, although it might have to wait until he does have Internet so I can remote desktop in and sort it out for him.

So can anyone advise what I need to do to get his monitor working with the Nvidia card again?

[Tripredacus]

He managed to right-click the desktop and click properties and could see two monitors, with only one enabled but he was unable to change this being in Safe Mode.

The nVidia software will like to override the Windows settings. You should make the changes in there, presuming that software is installed.

[jaclaz]

I would go to device manager and remove the hardware involved, then reboot.

jaclaz

[allen2]

I would check if the default screen resolution set in windows/nvidia is supported by the lcd monitor. Some lcd monitor only support a few screen resolution usualy at a vertical refresh rate of 60Hz unlike CRT that could handle more than 100Hz.

[doveman]

The nVidia software will like to override the Windows settings. You should make the changes in there, presuming that software is installed.

From what he told me, the nvidia option wasn't in the right-click on desktop menu in Safe Mode and in Normal mode he only saw an Nvidia option that brought up TV settings but obviously it's hard to be sure considering he was having to look across the room at the TV. It's been a long while since I've used Nvidia, so maybe there's some other way to access the Nvidia software from the control panel or something?

[doveman]

I would go to device manager and remove the hardware involved, then reboot.

jaclaz

So boot to normal mode, uninstall the Nvida FX5600 entry in device manager and reboot? I guess I'm a bit nervous that could result in not even the TV displaying a picture either

I guess if that does happen, I'd have to get him to go into the BIOS and enable the onboard graphics (I presume I must have disabled it when I installed the Nvidia card, my Mum's got the same PC so I can check the BIOS options this weekend) and connect the monitor to that and hope that works OK.

[doveman]

I would check if the default screen resolution set in windows/nvidia is supported by the lcd monitor. Some lcd monitor only support a few screen resolution usualy at a vertical refresh rate of 60Hz unlike CRT that could handle more than 100Hz.

I can't think why that would have changed though, just because he's moved house The only thing I can imagine is that perhaps he had the monitor connected to the onboard graphics (which is disabled) rather than the card when he first tried and therefore Windows couldn't see a monitor and reset the refresh rate to something that his monitor doesn't suppor,t although I don't know if it does that or if it should automatically go back to the refresh rate that was being used before once the monitor is reconnected. The proper resolution for his monitor is 1024x768@60hz.