Display issue

Telecaster · 25 Jan 2016 at 20:50

Causing me much head scratching this one, I built my Dad a new desktop last week and coincided it with a W10 upgrade (He was on W7), all seemed fine except for him being a bit cagey about how to use W10 but that was expected.

He phoned me today explaining he'd messed with some setting or another and now there's no display, when it boots it goes through it's post and instead of going to the login screen the display just shows a floating box saying 'mode not supported'.

Now, I've tried it all ways up and I can't get it to display, I've hooked up an old CRT monitor and it displays fine on this, I went through as many display settings as I could think of and nothing looks out of place, I even set it to boot in safe mode and then connected it back up to his main display and it shows safe mode, but when you restart it it just goes back to showing 'mode not supported' - I'm stumped, main problem being I can't get him to remember what he messed with, all he can remember is he was looking for something to make text bigger or alter some sort of display setting :rolleyes:

Spec is;
G3258
ASUS H81I-plus
64GB Crucial SSD
8GB Team Group RAM
Corsair CS550M PSU
W10
Display is a rather naff Samsung LCD 15" 1024x768 TV but it does him fine and works without a problem usually.

Telecaster · 25 Jan 2016 at 20:59

Nope. I can't see the option to set the refresh rate, but no matter what resolution I set it to it won't display on the TFT.

Telecaster · 25 Jan 2016 at 22:21

I've been into that screen but there was no option to change the refresh rate other than to what it was set to :confused:

Edit: could being connected via VGA be an issue? although I can't see why seeing as it was originally OK until he messed with something.

Telecaster · 27 Jan 2016 at 21:15

Update:

Still not sorted this.

I've updated the display driver and made sure the refresh rate is set to 60hz and it didn't change anything, so that's both the resolution and refresh rate that are set correctly.

The only way I can get any display on the TFT is to set it to boot into safe mode, but this only enables basic display drivers so I'm wondering if it's an Intel HD Graphics setting that needs altering, except when I plug in the CRT monitor and check all those settings they all seem ok :confused:

I don't understand why it's auto detecting the CRT which is also connected via VGA and which works fine, but as soon as I plug in the TFT I get "mode not supported"

I've been through the very limited built in menu on the TFT but there aren't any options I can see for changing input connections or anything like that, but in which case if that was set wrong then surely I'd be seeing nothing at all, but I get the post screen and can view the BIOS fine, it's just after posting when it flunks out.

Telecaster · 27 Jan 2016 at 22:36

But it worked fine right from the off without me touching anything, I literally plugged it in and was away, and he used it fine for about 3-4 days before he rang me after fiddling with something.

I also installed it all on my own monitor prior to giving it him and it worked spot on for about a week without a single hitch.

I'm losing my kudos big time here as the family IT guy

Telecaster · 29 Jan 2016 at 18:17

APM said:
The Intel HD graphics GUI will only show you what it's connected to at that time so you'd need to have both the CRT and the TFT connected at once to be able to see how it's dealing with both those things.

Is everything as it should be in BIOS too?

He isn't aware of the BIOS so unless something strange has happened I'd be surprised if anything is wrong there, although I have been into it but I couldn't see anything that directly relates to the display issue.

Never thought of of the Intel HD GUI thing, I'll have to see if I can get both of them connected at the same time, this sounds the most promising.

JJimmyJ said:
Hmmmm, could be bios issue. Had this on a laptop with an upgrade to win 10. An update to the newest bios fixed the problem. Could plug in a monitor and it displayed no problem, quick bios flash to newest version and problem solved.

He's on the latest BIOS already, I flashed it when I built it to prevent as many future issues as possible.

Telecaster · 31 Jan 2016 at 20:31

Sort of got somewhere with this, but not sure why or how.

I connected another 720p camping TV he has, via HDMI and when both are connected and set to duplicate the display they both work fine, I can go into the display settings and the TFT is set correctly to 60hz and 1024x768, I can't see anything else that can be causing an issue, and yet when I disconnect the HDMI or set to show as one monitor it just goes back to 'Mode Not Supported'...

The only way I can get it to play through the TFT is to disable the Intel HD Graphics in device manager, set like this it boots and works fine, but as soon as I enable it again I lose it.

Only up side to this is it has him looking at a cheap 1080p monitor as an upgrade, hopefully this will cure the problem as I'm stumped otherwise.