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Bootcamp External Monitor / Dual Monitor Problem (Windows 7 64 bit)

N

ninjamoby

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 6, 2008
26
0
Hi all-

Late 2008 15" MBP with 9600M GT.

I set up my dual monitors in Windows 7 (external display via minidisplay to DVI adapter), then turned off the LCD screen and defaulted to the external display only.

However my external display is not giving me any picture now - even though it is detected over the minisplay. The display works fine when connected to another system.

If I plug in the Minidisplay, my LCD screen turns off so I have no way of trouble-shooting the issue via the NVidia Control panel (ie: I can't turn back on the dual display without the Minidisplay connected, but can't see anything when it is connected).

I hope that was clear. Does anyone have an idea what's going on here and how to resolve?
 
Yo.

When you're running it without the mini-displayport connector plugged in, download and install a VNC server to the computer. I use TightVNC. Then, when you plug your connector in, use another machine (or a phone with a VNC client on it) to control your computer remotely, giving you access to the Nvidia Control Panel to troubleshoot.

Hope that helps!
 
Thanks for your response.

Oddly enough if I use the Mini-Display to VGA connector the image works, just not Mini-Display to DVI (which works in OSX but not Windows).

Could also be an issue with the Monitor or the Minidisplay port I guess.
 
Are you connected to a power source? I believe that in order to just use an external monitor you must be connected to a power source otherwise it won't let you just run the external monitor. Maybe that is only in OS X and not windows, but it's worth noting that.

Cheers
 
aeneid said:
Are you connected to a power source? I believe that in order to just use an external monitor you must be connected to a power source otherwise it won't let you just run the external monitor. Maybe that is only in OS X and not windows, but it's worth noting that.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Pretty much every laptop with a monitor output will run a secondary display without being connected to a power supply. Every OS X computer definitely will.

As for the fix, I had the exact same issue. As xref says, installing the older driver fixes it. It appears to be an incompatibility between the Macbook GPU and the latest nvidia driver.

Setting up VNC to fix the black screen problem is needlessly complicating matters - pressing command-P (on a windows keyboard this is windows key-P) on the keyboard cycles the different monitor output modes, eventually you will cycle back to MacBook display only. This is a standard Windows keyboard shortcut, and a mighty useful one if you regularly use external monitors/projectors.
 
xref said:
I had this problem when I used the latest Nvidia drivers off of their website. User driver version 267.76 instead.

Link: http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win7-64bit-267.76-whql-driver.html
Click to expand...

This worked like a charm running Bootcamp Windows 7 (64-bit) on my 2010 13" Macbook Pro, using the Nvidia 320M chipset. I installed the very latest drivers from Nvidia and displayport-to-DVI was failing a couple weeks ago. Now it works great. Thanks for the suggestion!

Note: if you have the latest driver, it will keep asking you if you want to overwrite the target file which is newer. Obviously, the answer is YES. So keep hitting Yes, until it finishes over-writing all the driver files.
 
sashimoto said:
This worked like a charm running Bootcamp Windows 7 (64-bit) on my 2010 13" Macbook Pro, using the Nvidia 320M chipset. I installed the very latest drivers from Nvidia and displayport-to-DVI was failing a couple weeks ago. Now it works great. Thanks for the suggestion!
Click to expand...

Does sleep work with those drivers? I tried many older and beta drivers from NVidia site and except for the ones Apple ships with Boot Camp - all others blue screen when attempting to put the laptop to sleep. (I had same problem with dual displays with Win 7 Boot Camp Drivers)
 
Fixed this issue on my MBP

I was also having this issue with my MBP recognising the external monitor when using bootcamp with windows 7 64 bit. It appears that this issue was with Intels latest chipset drivers. Once I rolled these back to driver ver 15.26.8.64.2696 the issue was resolved.

I hope this helps someone else because I spent 2 hrs with Apple support and them trying to tell me it was an issue with my monitor, to the adapter itself. This was the first and last time will be calling the so called "Mac Genius'" The most frustrating support experience I have ever had.
 
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