Bad DVI on Viewsonic vx2025wm
Had a strange thing happen to me this morning with my Viewsonic vx2025wm. I was busy setting up my new Mac Pro and copying files from my old G4. Finally, I shutdown the G4 to take some of the old drives out so I could move them into the new computer (which I couldn’t do anyway, b/c the new computer is SATA and the old drives are ATA.) When I rebooted the screen no longer came up, saying no signal. I then checked the cables on another monitor and also checked the display output, all of which were fine. I then got an old SVGA cable and a VGA to DVI converter and tried the SVGA port on the Viewsonic. It worked, much to my relief and dismay. My first thought was the DVI port on the monitor had gone bad, so I called Viewsonic technical support. After being totally surprised that a real, live, human being speaking perfect English picked up the phone after only 2 menus AND less than 30 seconds of hold time, I got the following information from tech. support:
It seems the DVI port has a bug in it where it can “forget” that it is on. To fix it, you have to “reboot” the monitor. Here are the steps:
- Power up the computer(s) with both the DVI and SVGA ports plugged into the computers (it can be done on one computer if you have a DVI and SVGA output)
- After the boot up completely (i.e. login screen), power them both down again
- Unplug the SVGA connector (leave the DVI alone)
- Unplug the monitor and leave unplugged for 10+ seconds
- Plug back in the monitor
- Start the computer and the monitor should work
Hope this helps…
August 14th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Thank you for your help. I’ve been fuming all morning because I couldn’t figure this out. The night before I was moving all of my files to an external hard drive, woke up, and now this. I too came to the conclusion that either the DVI port was ruined or the chord was out after hooking up through SVGA. I was about to go purchase some some stuff when I googled “Bad DVI port” and voila, here you are. Worked like a charm. Now I can play Warcraft again
Thanks for your help.
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:53 am
I had the exact same scenario (no edid out on vx2025wm after rebooting a Ubuntu CD) , but this procedure did not fix it. Fyi….
October 28th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Odd. I have the same problem after using Ubuntu also. I even tried the EDID.iso
March 2nd, 2008 at 7:53 am
Hi,
It worked for me too – on my new HP w2207h – what a releif!
Thank you
Rick
March 11th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
THANKS! This worked for me when my DVI connection “died” on my VX2025wm after installing a new hard drive in my system. I also was able to get the display back using the VGA connection but had I was having no luck with the DVI connection until I found your comments after a Google search. Thanks Again for posting this!
Marcel
March 27th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Damn. Same problem (though not caused by a hard drive swap), but your solution didn’t work for me. Guess I’ll have to call VS…
April 7th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Didn’t work for me either.
Hey Aylwin, did VS offer any help at all or offer to send a replacement??
May 14th, 2008 at 4:20 am
For me the problem isn’t still solved.
Tested my system with another ViewSonic (exactly the same model, with +1 S/N), and worked.
Tested my monitor with a system exactly identical to mine, doesn’t work.
This means the problem is with this particular MFing monitor.
Also one thing I’m sure of is that the working ViewSonic was never connected via D-SUB in its whole life, but this MFing one was almost connected thru DVI and 2-3 times using D-SUB to non-DVIed systems for test/install issues.
It’s still detected as “Generic Non-Pnp Monitor”, and believe me, this means “it’s NOT detected at all”, which means bad (in my case, empty) EDID.
It still shows blank screen (no signal) after Server 2008 / Vista passes the green progress bar, right when the num lock turns on by Windows.
My options:
1. Use the monitor with D-SUB (I won’t, paid for DVI)
2. Switch back to Server 2003 (Won’t do, it’s 2008, 2003 is expired!)
3. Throw the monitor out of the Window (I really mean it, after 4 days struggling) and get a new bigger HD one. (Not a ViewSonic, that’s for sure.)
————————–
OS: Server 2008 Enterprise x86 / Vista Ultimate x86
DSP: ViewSonic VX2025wm (DVI)
GFX: XFX nVidia 8800 GT (169.32, also many other older versions tested, even a modded 174.74 was also tested)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4 GHz HT / Intel Pentium D 3.4 GHz HT
MB: Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 (F8/F12/F13e) / Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L (F8)
RAM: 4GB OCZ Dual-Channel CL4 Titanium / 2GB OCZ Dual Channel CL5 Special Ops
HDD: WD Caviar SE 320 GB / WD Caviar SE16 250 GB
PSU: CoolerMaster M700W / CoolerMaster eXtreme 430W / noname 300W
May 30th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Made a copy of the EDID from the working one, changed S/N section. Flashed the defected one. It’s all OK now. These got 2 EDIDs, one for D-Sub, and one for DVI. In most cases latter gets corrupted, even its checksum’s corruption is enough to cause you the trouble. Now I’ve learned to stay out of further trouble, try not to connect them using D-Sub anymore, also don’t disconnect/reconnect them from/to DVIed VGA card when wall socket is plugged-in. Also having a backup of your EDID will become handy someday!
May 31st, 2008 at 7:21 am
Komeil,
Any chance you could post instructions on how to do that?
Thanks,
Grant
June 15th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I described the whole process in my blog, here:
http://komeil.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!11E09A8750032F2C!252.entry
August 4th, 2008 at 3:45 am
[...] google threw up [...]
September 4th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
*shakes head* if I had found this page one month earlier I would have saved myself close to $400 on a new monitor. This solution worked great on my dead VX2025WM. How does a bug like this get past QA?
September 15th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Jon,
This isn’t a QA issue. Yours was OK when it was tested by that chinawoman in Guangzhou or whatever!
The EDID data was defected/erased sometime when you attached your VGA connector, and it could be an age before you’ve installed Vista. I recall mine was detected as “Generic Non-PnP Monitor” for almost its entire life, but I was using Server 2003, and it (XP/2003) wasn’t popping out the problem, and I wasn’t wise enough to look into “Non-PnP” and see “not detected” way before Vista comes along.
The IC responsible for keeping the EDID data, God knows, a Samsung, or NEC, or whatever, and the circuit connecting it to the rest of the board, should be write-protected, but it isn’t, you and I both flashed it utilizing an application in Windows, having neither an iron nor a plier (of course I have, a basement full, but useless in this case) through DVI, itself, bare-handed!
This terribly sounds like a class action, just like Seagate (Maxtor (Quantum eater) eater), who will offer customers 5% cash back on disk drives bought over the last six years in order to settle a legal action over the measurement of hard drive capacity (an 80 GB disk is formatted 74 GB), so the world’s largest hard disk manufacturer never forgets one gigabyte was, is, and will be exactly 1,073,741,824 bytes!
We live in a world where even our cordless Panasonic handset’s caller ID, if targeted for DTMF-based countries, can be changed to support Bellcore, and that’s done without a surprise by flashing an IC, so don’t bother, the eight who decided for globalization and shared platforms owe you $400. How much do they owe Xzibit for selling him a Bentley Continental GT, a rebadged and glorified Volkswagen Phaeton?
September 17th, 2008 at 11:54 am
well after messing around with my pc the other day the “dvi” port seemed to die, d-sub worked fine but i was upset with the quality and called viewsonic for a RMA… had it all boxed up and was about to walk out the door to ship my monitor off when my wife found this post… so i said worth a shot and unboxed it… and it WORKS!!!
you saved me 2-3 weeks of useing a old 13″ monitor! i love you!
September 27th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
thank you so much, i had the exact same problem, it was almost eerie reading you page….
October 16th, 2008 at 9:49 am
I tried this procedure on my VX2255wmb and alas, didn’t get it to work.
It’s worth noting that ViewSonic warranty policy is this ; if you bought your LCD monitor after 31st March 08, you qualify for 3 years Premium Exchange Service – they will courier you a replacement unit, you give the duff item to the courier by way of return.
Before that, the warranty period can be as low as 2 years, and unless you have a monitor in their VP line, it’s RTB (they will dispatch your fixed or replaced unit 5-10 days after their repair lab receives the duff one). You pay the postage to the service centre.
Since you don’t have to register a warranty card (unless you live in Poland or Bulgaria), and ViewSonic support have no means of telling when you bought your monitor, my advice to anyone wanting an RMA on one of these is to tell them that you bought it after March ‘08, even if that’s stretching the truth a little.
I was lucky enough to be able to truthfully tell them I bought my monitor in September, and I’m told that I will have a replacement on my doorstep between 0900 and 1000 tomorrow. I’m a little apprehensive about dead pixels, etc, so I’ll come back and let you know how the new one is.
I almost hope it’s a refurb – from what I can tell, the “dead DVI” problem is pretty endemic, and not just in ViewSonic units, and if they are applying some kind of fix in the service centre that prevents it recurring, I’d rather have a refurb as long as it has no dead pixels and they replace the lamp to make sure it has a full usage life.
Sounds like someone making common components for LCD screens screwed up their EDID component design and made it too fragile.
October 17th, 2008 at 6:48 am
Hello again
As you can tell from the smiley, I’m a happy bunny.
Courier arrived (1000 – yeah, right, more like 1230), dropped off, picked up.
I’m looking at what is probably a refurb, but an otherwise perfect unit. Zero subpixel defects (1), working webcam, and yes, working DVI port.
Given all the horror stories about DVI ports I’ve found on the web the last couple of days, from more brands than just ViewSonic, I’m not put off buying ViewSonic again, because at least I know they have a decent warranty service.
(You definitely bought your monitor AFTER March ‘08, DIDN’T YOU)
(1) ViewSonic warranty covers zero WHOLE pixel defects and up to 4 subpixels, or a maximum of three dark or three bright.
January 17th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Noooooooooooooo
It’s failed again.
Here we go again.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:36 am
Ok, the post in January is a false alarm. It recovered, somehow. I think it was linked to the monitor going into sleep mode while not in it’s native resolution, which has made me resolve not to walk away from games for extended periods again.
But now it’s failed again, last week, permanently. It’s definitely the EDID. The only event I can correlate with it’s failure is that perhaps I upgraded my nvidia graphics driver on the same day it failed.
The port itself still works – I have a second panel of the same spec (but a different manufacturer) on the desk, and if you boot the Viewsonic on VGA, you can swap the cable from the other panel to the Viewsonic, select the digital port, and see the picture.
I was sensible enough to back up the EDID from the monitor the instant I got the replacement unit, but this hasn’t really helped.
I’ve now tried (unsuccessfully)
1) The two-port-shuffle trick from the thread above.
2) DVI_Recover (ddcw.exe)
The DVI port just doesn’t even register as existing. It won’t write the EDID for the VGA port either, which it reports as containing nothing but zero.
I also tried using NVFlash as recommended somewhere to set –protectoff – but I think this applies to the graphics card firmware and not the monitor EDID.
The real difficulty with using this util is that the monitor won’t start up from DVI – it may not have enough active parts to flash the EDID in sleep mode. I tried an automated boot disk with a copy of the EDID and booted it blind but that didn’t work.
2) Powerstrip
I shelled out £22 for the full version on the off chance that it would help. After ddcw.exe failed, I thought I might have more luck with the monitor in a powered state. Since you can swap the DVI cable from a another monitor to it and see a picture, that’s pretty good evidence that the monitor is powered up and the DVI port is selected.
My plan was to swap the DVI cable from my second unit (as above), and then get Powerstrip to write my handy backed up EDID to my Viewsonic.
Alas, Powerstrip can’t even find an EDID EEPROM on the unit, which fits with the idea that the whole EDID unit has failed in some way. At least Powerstrip helped me get my native 1680×1050 resolution back over VGA by writing me a custom resolution driver ; the DDC capability seems to be based on EDID also, and the EDID for the VGA port is blank, so I was getting only fuzzyvision.
Happily the nice warranty lady (in a native call centre, hooray) was pleased to get me a new one couriered, so I should see it tomorrow.
We’ll see how long this one lasts.
February 26th, 2009 at 7:16 am
Hopefully this will be my last post on this comment
I have my replacement unit. This one is definitely a refurb – the case has a few marks on it, it came in pillow wrap, not the original packaging. But that doesn’t bother me too much.
Firstly, zero dead pixels again, which is good. It would make sense if they reserved perfect panels only for replacement – it’s what I’d do, I wouldn’t want to eat another courier fee for the inevitable disgruntled callback.
The EDID says this is a VX2255wm-3 (not wmb), but on examination, so does the EDID from the one I just replaced. This one has a lower serial number too. Once again, I hope that it had the same problem and they fixed it permanently this time.
Ah well. I still have more than 2.5 years left on the warranty!
April 9th, 2009 at 5:33 am
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