Computer Woes: Envision Monitor Setup Headache

This is finally the completion of my quest to get my newly repaired two-month old monitor to work again. To recap, and to complete the story, I'm simply going to list the bullet points, just in case anyone else has to go through the same thing.

• I bought my new Envision G22LWk 22" wide screen flat panel LCD monitor on Dec. 28, 2007. Going out of business sale at CompUSA, $250. . .sweet!
• After installation, the monitor worked flawlessly, at a perfect resolution for blogging, drawing, web-surfing, whatever I wanted (I'm not a gamer).
• After two months, the monitor sputtered and died.
• After determining the procedure, I reinstalled my old 19" non-wide screen Dell LCD, and shipped the 22" to the shop for $15 (UPS shipping).
• On a whim, while using the 19" monitor, I installed a "Windows Vista Lookalike" program. It's pretty cool, and apes Vista very well.
• The Envision arrives about 10 days after I shipped it. Not bad.
• Remembering the "Vista" installation was for 4:3 monitors, I uninstall the lookalike pack. Everything is still fine.
• I unplug my 19" and plug in the 22" and start the computer up. The monitor works, but the image is distorted.
• Trying everything in my arsenal, as well as everything I can think of in Google, I simply cannot change the screen resolution to the 1680 x 1050 I need. It's either horrifically stretched images, over sized and jagged images, or undersized tiny images. No happy medium.
• I decided to go to Fry's and purchase a graphics card. I know that I have an available PCI slot, and a "PCI-Express" slot (PCI-E, which I'm unfamiliar with). They tell me the PCI-E x16 will work, even though I ask about the x16 part. I'm assured it will fit.
• It doesn't. I have a PCI-E x1. I take the card back and exchange it for a plain old PCI card (EVGA e-GeForce FX 5200) that I know will fit. They tell me that the 1680 x 1050 resolution is surely supported.
• Once installed, the monitor would go black after Windows started. My old card cannot be disabled. So, I got out the old 17" screen, hooked it up at the same time, and fiddled with the display settings until the 22" was the default monitor. But now, the resolution won't set right.
• 1600 x 1020 was as close to my resolution as it would go, and it looked fuzzy and terrible. Ready to scream, I futzed with some settings (in the EVGA software, not the Windows display settings) and finally, finally found a place to set custom resolutions. I typed in 1680 x 1050, and viola! it's perfect and beautiful again.

Both times I went to Fry's, the salesmen tried to point me toward super-expensive flashy graphics cards I don't need. Neither time could they tell me which resolutions any of the cards could output. No place in the instructions is there much help for the monitor recognition and custom resolution problems I was having. And why did it take a brand new video card to replicate the way it originally displayed before the monitor pooped out?

I'm a fiddle-farter with computers. I like to roll up my sleeves and get my feet wet (heh). What does everyone else do in these situations?

Previously:
Computer Upgrades: Good News for a Change!
Computer Woes: New Envision Monitor Gone Kaput
Computer Woes: Envision Monitor Returned

Computer Woes: Envision Monitor Returned

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the failure of my new wide screen monitor. It's an Envision G22LWk 22" monitor, and when it worked, it was glorious. Tons of screen real estate made blogging and web surfing in general a much more pleasant experience. But it pooped out after only two months.

I managed to figure out how to get it fixed, and only had to pay $15 to ship the monitor to California. It arrived back on my step while I was away in Iowa, and the friends who were watching my house brought it in for me (thanks you two!). The good news: The monitor works. The bad news: It doesn't work properly with my computer any more.

For some reason, my computer now stubbornly refuses to offer wide screen settings at all. Every pixel x pixel resolution choice is a 4:3 ratio instead of a 16:9. As a result, everything looks stretched horizontally (or squashed vertically) just like 90% of the wide screen TVs out there, where the users haven't figured out the proper settings.

I have a query in to Envision, but I expect they'll tell me it's either a Windows XP or Intel problem. I'm quite sure that the monitor used to display in authentic wide screen, but have no way to recover the original settings. And yes, I tried resetting the computer to an earlier date. No dice. Sigh.

Computer Woes: New Envision Monitor Gone Kaput

I sit here at my computer, using my old Dell 19" flat-panel monitor (having reinstalled the old Dell 17" flat-panel on The Other Half's computer). This is no major catastrophe, merely an annoyance.

I excitedly told you all about my new monitor two months ago, having acquired it at CompUSA's going out of business sale. It's an Envision G22LWk, a 22" wide-screen model, and I dearly loved that screen real estate. But yesterday, I started to get a little distortion around the edges, and a little bit of bleed on the black characters on a white screen. I decided to see if the settings needed tweaking, and found that my computer was using a generic Plug and Play driver.

So, I headed to the Envision website, downloaded their driver files. . .and promptly ran out of time. The monitor simply powered off. I tried (twice) to unplug, replug, and restart the monitor, and was successful for about 10 seconds apiece. It's toast.

Since it's been only two months and a week, I'm assuming I'm good, and that Envision will offer no resistance to replacement or repair. It stinks that I'll be responsible for shipping, but we'll see how it goes. I'll be reporting my progress (for good or ill) here on the blog. Stay tuned.