Input Not Supported

[Budfred]

I spent some time today preparing my old HP to network with my new P4. I removed the old DSL modem and an IDE controller card. I blew out the dust (not much surprisingly). I installed a NIC (D-link). I put the CDRW that had been on the IDE Controller as Slave (and jumpered it as Slave) on the same cable with the DVD. I closed it up and tried to boot.

It did POST, checked RAM and so on, then the WinME boot screen flashed and went to a blinking cursor. After a few seconds, the cursor gave way to a completely black background and a white box in the middle with the note above: "Input Not Supported". Windows continued to boot and apparently was fully booted into Windoze which I found when I got into Safe Mode and watched Scandisk run because I had shut down the power without doing Shutdown, since I couldn't see it.

I have no trouble booting into Safe Mode and I figured it had something to do with the monitor being different than the one I had been using so I went into Device Manager and eventually removed all monitor references (there were about 6 which I thought made it more likely this was the problem). It made no difference and still didn't do any better once I got the correct driver installed. By this time I was using Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot, so I didn't have to worry about corrupting the hard drive. I went back into Safe Mode and removed all but one Display Adapter, no joy. I went in again and removed the remaining one and Windoze put one back as I rebooted. Still no joy. I removed the NIC and still no joy.

At this point the computer is on and the "Input Not Supported" is dominating the screen.

The computer is an HP custom with 700Mhz AMD slot A. It has a 15 gig Maxtor hard drive, a DVD, CDRW, Nvidia video and a sound card (nothing fancy). At this point, there are no peripherals attached and the NIC is removed.

I would appreciate any ideas for how to proceed next....

Thanks...

[Variable]

Have you tried reducing the refresh rate of the monitor in advanced settings of display properties? IS the refresh rate to high for the monitor your using?
right click desktop/properties/settings/advanced/monitor ( well you know this but for the other people)

V

[Budfred]

I just loaded the driver for the monitor as part of the process of trying to figure this out and I can only access the settings in Safe Mode, so they are quite low. It would be the default settings I would think though. It is an Envision 5100E 15" LCD monitor, so it runs at 75mhz I believe. I'll check it again in Safe Mode just to be sure....

[Budfred]

Well here is an interesting tidbit. I had left the HP on with the "Input Not Supported" screen while I was doing other things including reading my messages here. After Variable's suggestion I went over to see what I could do with it and found that my screen saver was running merrily away in very good resolution. I moved the mouse and went back to "Input Not Supported". GRRRRR....

I may end up having to reinstall Windoze, but I would really rather avoid that for the moment. After I get everything set up on this computer the way I want, I plan to do that anyway, but I want to transfer some things first. I also would really like to just figure out what the heck is going on.

What I have done now: I tried the advanced settings and they simply said that the information is unknown since it was in Safe Mode. I tried changing settings on the monitor itself and used Reset. It is lining up the picture better with the Autoconfig, but it isn't showing me Windoze in Normal Mode. I disabled almost everything in msconfig and no joy. Right now it is sitting in Safe Mode and I will experiment some more before bed, but I am not sure what else I can do. I am going to look at Device Manager again to see if I missed anything there.

[mjc]

Depending on the screensaver used it can change the resolution......

In Safe Mode, fire uop regedit and ry going to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Class\Display and delete that whole key (yes, this bascially will remove your video drivers) then reboot, when you reboot windows should start up in standard VGA mode and prompt you for the video card drivers.

[Reid]

Have you tried a lower refresh rate as Variable suggested? I know the specs say 75Hz, but I saw this:

http://www.envisionmonitor.com/default.asp

Q Monitor displays “Input Not Supported”. (LCD monitor only)
A This means the computer is sending an incompatible display mode to your monitor. Please check the user’s manual for supported display mode or input and configure your computer to those settings. The recommended setting for LCD panel is 1024x768 resolution and you may need to change the refresh rate of the monitor to 60Hz.

[Sylvander]

See this http://tinyurl.com/jjuf

[Budfred]

Changing the registry seems to have gotten me into Normal Mode, but now I need to find and install the Nvidia drivers.

I didn't check the refresh rate because I couldn't access the information from Safe Mode. I just found an pdf on the Envision site that says how to do this, but I couldn't access it. I will try the driver and see what happens.

Thanks guys...

[Budfred]

Update again....

I found and installed the Nvidia drivers which resulted in "Input Not Supported". Back to Safe Mode to find out how to turn down the refresh rate on my monitor. Decided: what the hell, I'll turn off Hardware Acceleration and it wanted to reboot to make that happen. It booted into a distorted version of Normal Mode that looked a lot like Safe Mode. This allowed me to make some adjustments to resolution and color depth that brought me to another reboot. Meanwhile, my icons were mostly unreadable. On the reboot (I think it was this one, so many I lost track), I was able to actually adjust the refresh rate of the monitor to 60mhz and on the reboot for that I was able to get to full resolution and color depth. Somewhere in there I also turned Hardware Acceleration back on. I just shut it down for the night and hopefully will find it still working in the morning.

I know the monitor can handle a higher refresh rate because I was using it with the P4 to set it up and it was at 75mhz. Maybe it is the interaction of the Nvidia card and monitor that made it put up a fuss. In any case, for now it is working and hopefully it will continue so that I can work on networking it. Now I have to reinstall that NIC....

Thanks again for the help guys...