PC won't boot up with 2 monitors plugged in

[latrosicarius]

Hi, I have an ATI X850 Pro and it has 1 VGA port and 1 DVI port. Well my main monitor is the VGA, but when I hook up the Plasma TV to the DVI port, the PC won't boot up.

Once the PC is booted up with only one monitor, I have no problem hooking up the other one and getting both screens working just fine (clone mode / extended desktop / etc)..... but I can't reboot or neither will come on and I have to set them up all over again!

Does anyone know the solution to this problem?
Thanks

[Craig321]

How long have you waited for it to boot up? Does it post beep etc. ?

[latrosicarius]

No, it doesn't seem to beep at all... and the speakers are on so I should hear windows booting up, but it never does.

[streetster]

what happens if you have *just* the plasma (via dvi) connected, does the PC boot?

[Craig321]

No, it doesn't seem to beep at all... and the speakers are on so I should hear windows booting up, but it never does.

Hmm, yes, try what streetster said - boot up with each screen on their own so you can see if it's one of them causing the problem.

[latrosicarius]

Okay, I tried booting it up with just the plasma TV. No, it didn't POST or boot into Windows.

What do you think the problem might be?

[CrazyMonkey]

Either the DVI port on the graphics card is dead, or same with the TV. Perhaps something else but id say one of the above.

[latrosicarius]

^ But it can't be dead b/c it works just fine after I boot up with the normal monitor? Once it's booted up I can plug in the Plasma and set it up for clone or extended desktop and it works like normal. Plug-n-Play works too...

I just don't understand this... I'm never going to buy another ATI P.O.S. again.

EDIT:

Oh, btw, I should let you guys know that I'm no stranger to dual monitors.. I have a dual display off of a Nvidia card at work and it works without any of these problems.

[streetster]

try posting in the ATI section of this forum, perhaps they can give you some more in depth advice

[finlay666]

have you booted up with the pc monitor in fine, got into windows THEN plugged the tv in? maybe you need to configure it first to have a dual output

[streetster]

have you booted up with the pc monitor in fine, got into windows THEN plugged the tv in? maybe you need to configure it first to have a dual output

dual output works fine from within windows, the problem comes when the TV is connected via DVI and then the PC is turned on.... seems to low-level to be a driver/windows-based issue...

[finlay666]

I was suggesting it may have to be configured in the Catalyst control centre

in the menu for displays manager in the CCC and that may help if you try to hot plug it then configure it, it may have to be set up as a secondary monitor

[latrosicarius]

I tried using UltraMon to make monitor profiles... e.g.: click one shortcut to go into Single mode, and another to go into Dual mode.

However, one of the problems is the DVI port is the "primary" port, but since I can only boot up using the "secondary" VGA port, as soon as Windows takes over control of the driver, it detects there is only one monitor and makes it the primary--even though it's physically the secondary.

This Means that my UltraMon profiles don't practically work b/c the monitors keep switching between primary and secondary all the time. So it confuses them and gives the opposite resolutions that I tell it to do. What's worse is that the taskbar flies over to the plasma screen b/c it thinks its the monitor and then I have to have someone in the next room tell me to "move the mouse down, now to the right, a little bit to the left" in order to change it back.

It's very frustrating. I've even tried setting the profiles up "backwards" to begin with, but for some reason UltraMon is so "smart" that it "knows" what I'm telling it, even tho I'm not, and it STILL flips them backwards.

I give up.... I'm buying a cheap PC off of ebay to run the TV as a dedicated monitor... I'll just network the PCs together so I can access the videos on my main PC.

[shaithis]

Seems to me to be a quirk of the card or the plasma....

If there are no beep codes, then something is stopping even the BIOS from initialising.

What make/model plasma is it?

[latrosicarius]

^ well, I already bought some components for a new PC to run it, but it is a Sony WEGA 1080i plasma... This is my parent's TV and I won't be back there until Christmas, so I'll post the model number for you then, but just FYI since I'm just going with the dedicated PC rout instead of gonna try to solve this issue.

Yes, no beeps either. Just nothing happens. The PC power comes on, but it just does nothing. May be the graphics card DVI port has some sort of a short in it or something, but I don't understand how it would work 100% fine AFTER boot-up, but not DURING boot-up lol.

Anyway, thanks all for the guidance

[awm]

I wonder if it has something to do with the BIOS not wanting to post to a non-standard resolution?