Win 98 and Multiple Monitors Part Three
Troubleshooting Multiple-Monitor Setup
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Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor
option is unavailable:
1. Make sure that the monitor is set to display in
256 colors or higher.
2. Verify that your secondary card is compatible
with multiple-monitors.
3. Make sure you are not using a Windows 3.1
driver for the primary card.
4. Check to see if you are using an ISA, VLB, or
MCA card. Multiple-monitors require PCI or AGP cards
for all display adapters.
5. Check to see whether any third-party display control
panels are installed. Right-click the desktop, and
then click Properties. Look for any tabs that are
related to the video cards in your system. Next,
click Settings, and then click Advanced. You should
see only the General, Adapter, Monitor, Performance,
Color Management, and possibly the ATI Display tabs.
You can usually remove any Display Control Panel
extensions that you find by using the Add/Remove
Programs feature in the Control Panel.
Common Problems:
If your system will not start when you have two video
cards installed or if the second comes up with a "code 12"
in Device Manager, move all the video cards needed to
the slots that are closest to the motherboard when on a
riser card. Some systems only support display adapter
cards in the first one or two slots closest to the
motherboard.
If you experience one of the following problems, disable
your on-board Rage II. This device cannot be used as one
of your multiple-monitor display adapters.
- Your on-board ATI Rage II displays vertical green
bands when you install the secondary card.
- Your system locks up during Startup, and the Automatic
Skip Driver (ASD) reports that My system died while
initializing a video ROM.
- Your IBM Aptiva locks up during Startup after detecting
the secondary, loading the drivers, and rebooting.
- Nothing happens when you click the Extend my Windows
desktop onto this monitor check box.
If a yellow exclamation point appears beside one of your
video cards in Device Manager and if it indicates the region
of memory that the video card uses is in use, try one of
the following:
- On some laptops, you can specify where the region
of memory used by the video card is located in the
system BIOS. Set this to C000-CFFF or to the largest
range possible that begins with C000.
- Remove EMM386.EXE
- Type the following under the [386enh] section of
system.ini: "Emmexclude C000-CFFF"
If your system locks up after installing the secondary
card when you add a STB Workstation two-adapter card, then
the video cards in this system are configured incorrectly
by the system BIOS. As a result, it destabilizes the entire
system. Your particular system probably cannot use video
cards that are behind PCI-PCI bridges.
If your card is listed in the supported card section, but
Device Manager indicates that your card does not work with
Multiple Display Support, then make sure that you are using
the right driver, as listed at the beginning of this document.
If Device Manager indicates that My primary video card
cannot be disabled, your card is not supported in this
configuration for multiple-monitor.
If you experience one of the following problems, then your
display driver is not compatible with multi-monitor. Contact
your vendor for an updated driver.
- If your screen goes black during Startup or your system
hangs and the Windows bootlog option indicates that the
problem occurred in GDI.
- A message appears on your screen indicating that a fatal
exception has occurred in GDI.
Roger Crawford
Microsoft WINSDK MVP |
