Dell 3008WFP doesn't display boot menu on MacPro

[blackberet]

I've been working on setting up a MacPro at work (I set up faculty members' computers at the university I attend), and I've gotten most of the many holes ironed out at this point. It's set up to run both OSX and Vista 64 through Boot Camp. I'm using the NTFS-3g driver so that the Windows drive is writeable from the Mac side. This required me to use rEFIt, which provides a boot menu at startup so that I can select which partition to run (NTFS-3g partitions aren't recognized by the Mac at startup, so this is the workaround).

So here's the issue... David (the faculty member) has a three monitor setup, with two 24" Samsung SyncMaster 215T's set in portrait on the left and right, and a huge 30" Dell 3008WFP in the middle in landscape (all are using DVI-D). The Dell is of course set as the primary display. When the computer boots up, rather than showing the off-white Apple boot screen, or -- as I would hope -- the rEFIt boot menu, it's just a black screen. The monitor recognizes the input because the status light turns from amber to blue. Once it gets into an OS all three monitors the OS appropriately.

This is an issue since David needs to be able to select an OS when he boots up, otherwise it will always go with the default.

I hooked in just one of the Samsungs via VGA, and the boot menu appears just as one would expect.

So the culprit is obviously the Dell. I went to their website and installed the driver for it (although now that I think of it, I may have only installed it on the Vista side... I wonder?). I've tried shutting it off and then on. I know the connections are secure and the cables are good. I've tried flipping through the monitor's different inputs during boot up as well. I'm not really sure what else can be done.

Any ideas?

[Sesshi]

Did it boot/display normally without rEFIt?

And if this is being used for anything important I'd stick to XP 32-bit on Boot Camp (well no actually, I'd toss it out and replace it with an Intel workstation worth a **** like a Precision T7400 or the xw9400, but that's neither here nor there). The otherwise rock-solid Vista 64 isn't stable on the Pro.

[Peace]

Sounds like your custom boot menu. I have that exact same monitor and I run Leopard and 32-bit Vista and can see all hard drives/OS's when I boot.

[Sesshi]

Yeah. I'd check the screen resolution etc that rEFIt menu defaults to. It may be a range outside of what the Dell handles.

[blackberet]

It was actually still staying blank without rEFIt, but I'll check on the resolution settings that it uses.

I would totally switch the Windows OS to XP and/or 32-bit, but his configuration requires it. He has 10GB RAM in his system (probably a lot more than he needs at this point, but I'll let him do his thing...), and 32-bit OSs can't recognize more than 4GB. So we had to use 64-bit. Also, Boot Camp doesn't currently support XP 64-bit, only Vista, so our only choice was to use Vista 64. It's been a pain ever since for many different reasons...

[Peace]

Vista SP1 shows all my RAM. I have 8GB.

[blackberet]

The only way for a 32-bit OS to recognize more than 4GB (and in reality, more than a bit over 3), is by enabling Physical Address Extension (PAE). This was an option I considered, but I wasn't able to track down a very simple explanation of how to implement it. It may be easy, but I only saw complicated explanations. So I went the 64-bit route.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/aa366778.aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_vista

[blackberet]

Oh, and the problem has essentially been solved. The Dell monitor was plugged into the first connection of the bottom video card. I switched it with one of the Samsungs (which were both on the upper video card), and rEFIt now uses that monitor to display the boot menu.

So it was most likely a resolution issue as mentioned above. After looking for a while, I didn't have the energy anymore to see how I might adjust that in rEFIt's settings.

Thanks for the words of advice!

[raincoat]

I have exactly the same issue on my Mac Pro with the Dell 3008 wfp. There are no drivers on Dells website for the Mac. I highlighted this in this post (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=457543).

Do I need a new monitor or is there a fix for this?