Monitor out of frequency problems

<yambe:breadcrumb>Hardware troubleshooting</yambe:breadcrumb>

Monitor out of frequency problems

Monitor out of frequency problems are not always due to frequency / unsupported resolution. Some motherboards do not have dedicated graphics card and hence portion of RAM is used for graphics. In this case BIOS has options for setting buffer memory to 32MB, 64MB, 128MB etc. values. Monitor may get disabled because of insufficient memory. Hence if we increase buffer memory or video buffer in BIOS many display problems can be solved. This is especially true for latest versions of many OS when run on old hardware.

Configuring X server

To solve frequency problems due to monitor limitations use:

1. First generate 'xorg.conf' using 'Xorg -configure'. This is necessary in newer versions of X server where configuration file is not present by default. The configuration file may get created in '/root' instead of current folder.
2. Copy created configuration file to location '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'.
3. Go to 'section Monitor' and add values for parameters 'HorizSync' and 'VertRefresh'. The proper values can be learned via drivers in other operating systems like Windows for which vendors provide drivers. It can also be searched or net or tried. Usually VertRefresh value of 60.0Hz is good.
4. Also go to 'Section "Screen"' and 'SubSection "Display"' and set value of modes as "1024x768" or in worse cases even "800x600". If things work you can also try your luck with "1280x1024"
5. You would have to reboot machine everytime to verify if changes are working or not. It is time consuming process to get things right and sometimes no matter how much one tries we do not get display.