morph166955
7th July 2007, 16:07
I'll first say that this post is strictly an informative one, its not meant to start any disputes or anything, this is just what worked for me!
First let me explain what the problem that I and from what I saw in my searches last night many others have seen. The nVidia Forceware drivers are missing some key resolutions, mainly 1280x720 and 1920x1080. They do have some resolutions around there (1280x768 for example) however those resolutions (in my case) were being improperly recognized by my Infocus SP5000 LCD Projector (which is 1280x720 natively). The 1280x768 was being recognized as 1024x768. In ALMOST all cases any resolution selected would default to a 4:3 of nearest size. As you can probably imagine, this looks horrible!
So after looking online and doing some of the tricks people said (such as powerstrip and creating my own monitor driver file), I came to one that offered an interesting idea. The idea was to modify the nVidia driver BEFORE installing it so that it included the resolutions we were looking for. For reference, I did this patch on the ForceWare 158.24 version for 32-bit Vista (please don't bring up the why 32-bit, it was all I had and I got it as a free promo from microsoft hence why I'm not on 64-bit).
NOTE: This is what I did for 720p. If you want to run 1080p just modify my approach and use 1920x1080 for your resolution.
1) First, download the driver package from nVidia and start the install. Were mainly looking for it to extract itself right now!
2) Once the main install starts (the one with the nice graphic background), end the install...were not ready to load it quite yet!
3) Go to c:\NVIDIA\WinVista\158.24 (or where ever you may have extracted it) and open up the nv_disp.inf file in notepad/wordpad
4) Somewhere around line 290 you will find a section called "nv_SoftwareDeviceSettings". Thats were our changes are to be done
5) I'm not sure if this step is necessary, but I did it and it worked so I'm including it.
Look for the following lines about 14-15 lines into the section:
HKR,, "DefaultSettings.XResolution", %REG_DWORD%, 800
HKR,, "DefaultSettings.YResolution", %REG_DWORD%, 600
Change them to be:
HKR,, "DefaultSettings.XResolution", %REG_DWORD%, 1280
HKR,, "DefaultSettings.YResolution", %REG_DWORD%, 720
6) Find the really long line starting with "HKR,, NV_Modes, %REG_MULTI_SZ%," that has all of the resolutions on it. For me it was the last one in the section and there was a blank line before it.
Here's my original line in full:
HKR,, NV_Modes, %REG_MULTI_SZ%, "{*}S 640x480 1280x768 1280x800 1360x768 1920x1200=1;800x600 848x480 960x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x960 1280x1024 1600x1200 1920x1440 2048x1536=3B;{191-19E,400-423}S 640x480x64 1280x768x64 1280x800x64 1360x768x64 1920x1200x64=1;800x600x64 848x480x64 960x600x64 1024x768x64 1152x864x64 1280x960x64 1280x1024x64 1600x1200x64 1920x1440x64 2048x1536x64=3B;"
I added 1280x720 (or in some cases 1280x720x64) in the proper locations (so that it was in the right order) so that it looked like this:
HKR,, NV_Modes, %REG_MULTI_SZ%, "{*}S 640x480 1280x720 1280x768 1280x800 1360x768 1920x1200=1;800x600 848x480 960x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x720 1280x960 1280x1024 1600x1200 1920x1440 2048x1536=3B;{191-19E,400-423}S 640x480x64 1280x720x64 1280x768x64 1280x800x64 1360x768x64 1920x1200x64=1;800x600x64 848x480x64 960x600x64 1024x768x64 1152x864x64 1280x720x64 1280x960x64 1280x1024x64 1600x1200x64 1920x1440x64 2048x1536x64=3B;"
7) Save the file and exit.
8) Now we can load the setup program again by executing the setup.exe file in this folder. It should load like normal, although it may complain that the driver is not signed. I believe this happens because the checksum for that file is changed so it may think that the driver has been damaged in some way. Just click through the warning if you get one.
9) When its all done, reboot (obviously). You MAY be told up front that you have to uninstall the current driver and reboot before you can fire up this new one, just do it! It will (should) auto restart the install process after the reboot.
One thing I noticed was that my colors were off when I did this. For some reason it kicks it down to 256 colors initially. Just simply go in to the nVidia control panel and kick that back up to 32-bit colors.
Enjoy!
First let me explain what the problem that I and from what I saw in my searches last night many others have seen. The nVidia Forceware drivers are missing some key resolutions, mainly 1280x720 and 1920x1080. They do have some resolutions around there (1280x768 for example) however those resolutions (in my case) were being improperly recognized by my Infocus SP5000 LCD Projector (which is 1280x720 natively). The 1280x768 was being recognized as 1024x768. In ALMOST all cases any resolution selected would default to a 4:3 of nearest size. As you can probably imagine, this looks horrible!
So after looking online and doing some of the tricks people said (such as powerstrip and creating my own monitor driver file), I came to one that offered an interesting idea. The idea was to modify the nVidia driver BEFORE installing it so that it included the resolutions we were looking for. For reference, I did this patch on the ForceWare 158.24 version for 32-bit Vista (please don't bring up the why 32-bit, it was all I had and I got it as a free promo from microsoft hence why I'm not on 64-bit).
NOTE: This is what I did for 720p. If you want to run 1080p just modify my approach and use 1920x1080 for your resolution.
1) First, download the driver package from nVidia and start the install. Were mainly looking for it to extract itself right now!
2) Once the main install starts (the one with the nice graphic background), end the install...were not ready to load it quite yet!
3) Go to c:\NVIDIA\WinVista\158.24 (or where ever you may have extracted it) and open up the nv_disp.inf file in notepad/wordpad
4) Somewhere around line 290 you will find a section called "nv_SoftwareDeviceSettings". Thats were our changes are to be done
5) I'm not sure if this step is necessary, but I did it and it worked so I'm including it.
Look for the following lines about 14-15 lines into the section:
HKR,, "DefaultSettings.XResolution", %REG_DWORD%, 800
HKR,, "DefaultSettings.YResolution", %REG_DWORD%, 600
Change them to be:
HKR,, "DefaultSettings.XResolution", %REG_DWORD%, 1280
HKR,, "DefaultSettings.YResolution", %REG_DWORD%, 720
6) Find the really long line starting with "HKR,, NV_Modes, %REG_MULTI_SZ%," that has all of the resolutions on it. For me it was the last one in the section and there was a blank line before it.
Here's my original line in full:
HKR,, NV_Modes, %REG_MULTI_SZ%, "{*}S 640x480 1280x768 1280x800 1360x768 1920x1200=1;800x600 848x480 960x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x960 1280x1024 1600x1200 1920x1440 2048x1536=3B;{191-19E,400-423}S 640x480x64 1280x768x64 1280x800x64 1360x768x64 1920x1200x64=1;800x600x64 848x480x64 960x600x64 1024x768x64 1152x864x64 1280x960x64 1280x1024x64 1600x1200x64 1920x1440x64 2048x1536x64=3B;"
I added 1280x720 (or in some cases 1280x720x64) in the proper locations (so that it was in the right order) so that it looked like this:
HKR,, NV_Modes, %REG_MULTI_SZ%, "{*}S 640x480 1280x720 1280x768 1280x800 1360x768 1920x1200=1;800x600 848x480 960x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x720 1280x960 1280x1024 1600x1200 1920x1440 2048x1536=3B;{191-19E,400-423}S 640x480x64 1280x720x64 1280x768x64 1280x800x64 1360x768x64 1920x1200x64=1;800x600x64 848x480x64 960x600x64 1024x768x64 1152x864x64 1280x720x64 1280x960x64 1280x1024x64 1600x1200x64 1920x1440x64 2048x1536x64=3B;"
7) Save the file and exit.
8) Now we can load the setup program again by executing the setup.exe file in this folder. It should load like normal, although it may complain that the driver is not signed. I believe this happens because the checksum for that file is changed so it may think that the driver has been damaged in some way. Just click through the warning if you get one.
9) When its all done, reboot (obviously). You MAY be told up front that you have to uninstall the current driver and reboot before you can fire up this new one, just do it! It will (should) auto restart the install process after the reboot.
One thing I noticed was that my colors were off when I did this. For some reason it kicks it down to 256 colors initially. Just simply go in to the nVidia control panel and kick that back up to 32-bit colors.
Enjoy!