W7 stuck in 400x600 resolution and 16 bit colour!

I've never come across this one before. I have just set-up new W7 OS for someone and am stuck in 400x600 and 16bit colour with it after first boot. I have downloaded 3 different drivers for the card and neither they, nor the native W7 card driver seem to be the problem. Neither the resolution sliders from the various nvidia driver software, nor the resolution drop-down box in W7 work.. The set-up was done using my personal Samsung screen and keyboard etc . I think I can rule out a display screen or card driver problem. as I'm getting the same result on the 2 spare screens I tried that I have here. The system is an Intel. I've always had a 1280x1024 resolution presented on first boot when installing W7, never 400x600. I've noticed on the web that the 400x600 problem is not that uncommon but have read of no fixes. Plenty of kind suggestion though but leading nowhere I'm afraid. Where to from here, any suggestions? Cheers, Lee

Have you tried installing 7 again? What graphics card are you using?

I set this up using a spare 9800GT (that I originally bought to run SLI on my own PC) as the PC owner is waiting on a new card. I have done 3 re-installs!

Okay, I think I've come across this one before. The 9800 GT, like most cards, needs to hooked up directly to the PSU via two 6pin PCI-E connectors. As far as I know I don't think the normal GT version has an error LED on the back like the GTX+. It could be that one of the cables is dead, or the PSU just isn't powerful enough.

The 9800GT in my PC and the spare I have are both 1G Gainward cards (the green edition). They don't have a power connector, they just slot into the MB and draw their power there. If the card was the problem, I should have the same problem on my PC too, but I don't. My board is AMD though, not Intel. Cheers, Lee PS: It's a 500w 80%+ certified PSU. Plenty of power.

Hmmm…..that's weird. Most 9800 GT's require at least one 6pin connector, and you're right…the Gainward one doesn't. What's the rest of the specs for the system?

A very nice board but the CPU needs an upgrade. Gigabyte GAEP45T-UD3LR Socket 775 2x2g Corsair 1333 CPU P4 524 3.06GHz (an oldy but a goody in it's day!)

I updated the bios before I did the install so I don't see it as the problem. Maybe that old CPU?

Yeah, I think so. The whole setup seems a bit weird to me. I'm not sure why Gigabyte thought it was a good idea to start mixing a 6 year old socket with DDR3, which has only really been around for the last year or two. My gut feeling is that even if you fixed the graphics bug, the P4 is going to be a major bottleneck. Everything will just feel horribly slow. The problem with whacking in a nice Core 2 is that a 500 W PSU is probably not going to be enough to support everything, especially considering you've got some beefy RAM. So it's a bit of a catch 22 situation. You could try using an older 8 series graphics card, something like an 8400, to see if it works. Ideally you want to have a card that doesn't need a lot of juice. Then try a bigger PSU in case the whole system is being starved, and if all fails, just buy yourself a Core 2. Just out of curiosity, is this a new build, or was it running before with Vista/XP installed?

Thanks for the opinion Nahumi,

I was thinking that old CPU might have something to do with the resolution problem too.

Well It's not my PC, but the owner already had decided to upgrade the CPU to a Duo 7500. He only recently upgraded the board from an older 775 that the CPU came out of. It was only ever going to be a temp. measure until he had a few more $$$.

I disagree about your PSU comments though.
I only have a 520w Corsair and I was running those 2 x 9800GT cards SLI with no problems whatsoever with some intensive games. (I pulled one out because I needed it to set up this guys PC (he sold his old 7 series card on ebay).

Todays hardware uses a lot less power than any of the old stuff. That old P4 CPU is a 90nm for starters and a Duo 7500 is only 45nm that requires half the power but is a 4 times better and faster CPU

Here is my own personal PC's power requirements from:
eXtreme Power Supply Calculator: http://www.extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

PSU at 90% load with 2HD's and a 9800GT Single card,6 fans total and a AMD64 Athlon 5200.

Min: 284w
Recommended: 334w

for SLI 9800GT x 2
Min: 363w
Recommended: 413w

That's at a 90% constant load too (unlikely to happen very often)!

No, power would never be a problem with one card (any card), regardless of other hardware with a 500w 80+ certified PSU. A lot of forums and reviewers are always pushing more and more power. It's all spin to sell ever more expensive hardware for their advertisers.

Cheers,
Lee

PS. I wasn't referring to THIS forum in my last comment above. Lol. Lol..

Ah, found the problem! In the updated bios ( a bios I'm not familiar with), I found that the Video card was set and being recognized as PCI, not PCI Express. I just changed those setting and bingo, no more problems with the 400x600 resolution syndrome and being stuck on 16bit colour. Cheers, Lee