Possible Error on my part

[Mithosphere]

First off its been a while, and by a while I mean a long time. I have tried keeping up with computers, but everything seems to be moving much quicker and with college and the whole music thing, I guess the whole forum thing fell by the way side.

Anyway . . .

Seems like my computer is having the strangest problem. I recently (about 25 minutes ago) rearranged my desk and decided i should hook up another monitor to my computer. I did, and tried for a while to just do the plug and play feature. Messed around in the nvidia control panel with the spreading of the screen across two monitors. This lead me to a restart for the computer to recognize the new monitor.

It did, except it placed my main monitor in the new desktop without any access to the taskbar. The newly hooked up monitor wasnt displaying anything at all (it went into powersave mode). So I had to do a forced shutdown. And then pressed power after unhooking both monitors and switching connections.

Started up and displayed everything on my main monitor (#1). And then a little window popped up exclaiming that i had hooked up a new monitor (#2). Opened up the properties of the desktop and then made the #1 my main desktop and #2 my secondary. I decided it would be good to do a restart so that the new monitor would recognize the resolution and things would hopefully work.

They didnt.

It just started up and displayed nothing after the windows loading screen. I unhooked everything. And tried just using #1. Same thing happened. Tried using #2. Same. Rehooked #1 and went into bios, everything looked fine, made sure that it was going through the pci express slot and not the onboard. Saved and quit. Still the black screen of no source after windows loading screen.

I figured i should then hook it into the onboard vga slot. Little information box popped up after windows loading screen letting me know
"OUT OF SCAN RANGE"
"52.98kHz/ 101Hz"

So anyone have an idea how to fix this without me having to reinstall windows(i have about 5 gigs that i havent backed up, mostly new stuff from today)?

Screen #1 is Westinghouse 22inch widescreen (1680x1050)
Screen #2 is a Sony 15 inch (1024x768)

[dttuner]

Reboot, and right before the "Windows XP Loading" screen pops-up... press F8 key repeatedly (you can basically do this the moment your computer powers-on, until the menu shows-up)

This will bring you into a menu, where you can select "Safe Mode"
Once into windows under safe mode, make the necessary changes.

Changes:
Revert back to original settings (1024x768 res., and 60Hz refresh, disable dual-monitors)
Reboot. Let Windows start normally
Download correct/latest drivers for both monitors, and research their native resolution & refresh rate.
Change settings to reflect correct native resolution, and refresh rate.

.

[screwballl]

boot into safe mode and reset the display settings using the windows display settings area to something like 1024x768 and 60Hz
After you reboot, let it start like normal and see if you have anything on either screen. then try using the Windows display settings area to enable the second display and set it up that way first.
After that works, then try messing with settings through the nvidia panel... if that messes it up each time then you may have to not use the nvidia panel at all.

it appears that it is changing your refresh rate to 100Hz instead of the usual 60-70Hz

[Mithosphere]

Well thanks, that did it, I seem to remember doing this before. but like everything else, i forget the easy things and most other things.

Now to reinstall windows. . .

[screwballl]

Originally Posted by Mithosphere

Well thanks, that did it, I seem to remember doing this before. but like everything else, i forget the easy things and most other things.

Now to reinstall windows. . .