Friday, February 28, 2014

Dell XPS 15 / NVIDIA GeForce GT 435M / external monitor issues

I've recently had some curious computer behaviour that appear loosely related to my video card+external monitor  combination.  I have no idea if they're related to each other, I have no idea if this is the whole story, I have no idea if there's some other underlying issue I can't see.  I'm just documenting what I know here for googleability in case it's helpful to someone.

The computer: a Dell XPS 15, running Windows 7
The video card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 435M
The display: a Dell E178FP LCD monitor, connected to the computer via a Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter (because the computer doesn't have VGA output and the monitor only has VGA input. However, sometimes I unplug the external monitor and instead use the built-in screen, which has widescreen dimensions.

The monitor blinking out problem

Every once in a while, it seemed randomly, the monitor would blink out, as though it had gone into sleep mode even though I don't have a sleep mode set.  Moving the mouse or pressing the keyboard wouldn't work and opening up the laptop wouldn't even work.  It would be completely frozen and I'd have to do a hard reboot. The appearance of this problem correlated with appearance of the monitor occasionally flickering when I was shredding paper (about 3 feet away from the monitor) and with difficulty switching back and forth between laptop screen and external monitor - when I connected the external monitor, it wouldn't pick up the picture (even when I pressed Windows key + P).  It would take multiple pluggings and unpluggings to make it work, and sometimes even a reboot.  And it got worse as time passed.

After this had been going on for some time, I noticed that the monitor blinked out when the Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter got jiggled.  I therefore bought a new adapter, and the problem stopped happening.

The Windows 7 Action Centre mystery

Shortly after I bought the new Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter that could withstand jiggling, an alert appeared in my Windows 7 Action Centre saying "Solve a problem with NVIDIA Graphics Driver."  However, when I clicked on it, it said "This solution could not be downloaded."  It's been saying that for months, always when I did in fact have a full and active internet connection.  The problem that it claims to be solving correlates with times when the computer crashed because of the adapter problem, so I don't know that there is in fact a driver issue (when this first appeared, my driver was the most recent one available).

The bad Windows Update

I don't routinely install all Windows updates, because in the past I've had problems with them conflicting or causing problems. Once my setup works, I prefer to keep it that way.  But, just recently, I noticed an update called "nVidia Graphics Adapter WDDM1.1, Graphics Adapter WDDM1.2, Graphics Adapter WDDM1.3,  released in October, 2013". I thought this might be the NVIDIA solution that the Action Centre was trying and failing to deliver, so I installed it.

And it completely disabled my external monitor.  No matter how many times I unplugged and replugged and switched back and forth between the monitors, nothing would display on my external monitor.

So I did a system restore, and the external monitor started working again.

The takeaway
(to the best of my knowledge):

- If your external monitor is connected using a Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter and you lose monitor signal, freezing the computer, try replacing the adapter.
- If this has happened and there's a useless Solve a problem with NVIDIA Graphics Driver" notice in your Windows Action Centre, this might be why.
- If you have installed a Windows update called "nVidia Graphics Adapter WDDM1.1, Graphics Adapter WDDM1.2, Graphics Adapter WDDM1.3,  released in October, 2013" and lost the use of your external monitor, try undoing the update.

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