Catalyst with old Control Panel (Dual Monitor Problem)

oscarin · July 23rd, 2007, 09:28 PM

HI:

First of all I want to thank Regeneration for his awesome job leting us have the Old Control Panel on Catalyst Drivers.

I'm actually using the version 6.7 with my Radeon X1900XTX, which for me is the far most stable, best FPS in all games. I've tried all the newer catalysts from 6.8 to 7.7 and I have to say they just don't work for me.

I have a question on the old control panel. I'm currently using dual montiors, flat panels displays.

When I tell Windows to extend my desktop, it does fine, and when I check the Old Control Panel it says the I have monitor 1 and monitor 2 working correctly. All fine.

The problem starts when I reboot the system, it boots using the dual monitors, and it shows extended desktop, just before I log in into windows.
Once I log in, the second monitor deactivates and it puts me back into single monitor(non extended desktop)

I'm doing some research and I've found that the settings form the HOTKEY POLLER service, seem to override whatever is set in the Old Control Panel. In other words, whatever changes I make in the Control Panel, are neglected late by the ATI hotkey poller.

I might or might not deactivate the hotkey poller later.
But I just want to know, I've seen many entries on the registry, all starting with "DALRULE_ ".

I would like to know which one of them activates the second monitor (or detects its) and which one activates the extended desktop.

I would love some help in this, and probably Regeneration knows this much better than me.

Do you guys have any documentation on CATALYST Registry settings? I would love to know what each of these entries (DALRULE_ XXX) mean. That would be awesome.

Thanks a bunch in advance!

**Regeneration** · July 23rd, 2007, 10:18 PM

The Hotkey poller is responsible for the 2D/3D clocks trigger. Disabling this service may cause problems with the clocks. It will take me some time to track and provide workaround for this issue, I don't remember the exact key, but it should be part of Windows. The only keys in the CP are for tagging which monitor is primary/secondary.

You can try to remove SYSTEM write permission from the registry subkey, or use Hibernate instead of a shutdown (Also providing faster boot time). Or you can enable extended desktop, export the registry, disable it and export the registry again to another file, and compare the files (Total Commander should do that).

Anyway, I couldn't reproduce this issue on the PCs here. Can you provide more details?

oscarin · July 23rd, 2007, 11:49 PM

Thanks so much regeneration.

I've been looking foward to speak to you. I would really appreciate if you can help dual monitor users with this problem.

As for me I'm preparing a surprise thread that is going to help a lot of users here
regarding that BSOD related to the "ati3dduag.dll" driver.

I'm looking foward to hear from you about this matter.

Thank you!

oscarin · July 24th, 2007, 01:32 AM

Hi there again:

Just like I though, if I disable the HOTKEY POLLER it will mess around with the clock.
Thanks for clarifying that.

The way to reproduce this:

- I've installed your version of CAT 6.7 with Old CP, with the two monitors turned on.

-I've ran your setup, then it installs the CAT driver and the WDM drivers.

- Restart, and then run the setup for the CP, restart again.

Then when Windows Starts, I go into the display setting s and select the secon monitor icon, and set to "Extend my windows desktop on the second monitor"

Then I open the CAT old CP and it show me the monitors fine, turned on, and flagged as 1 and 2 respectively.

But when I restart the machine again, and then get into Windows, the second monitor turns off, and my settings to extend desktop go back to a single display.

I really need to know which is the registry key to make the drivers remember that there is a second monitor on. I'm still not sure which DALRULE_XXX is the right registry setting.

Regeneration, do you happen to have any documentation on what each of these registry entries mean?

Thanks a bunch again!!

**Regeneration** · July 24th, 2007, 08:42 AM

I don’t have any documentation at this moment, but I’m working on it for some long time. I tried reproducing this issue with your steps (but with Catalyst 7.7 and CRT+LCD monitors), but still everything is working fine after reboot. The Windows Desktop Extend feature is part of the Windows Operation System.

You don’t even need the CP to configure it, you can use the Display Adapter control panel to configure which monitor is on the left, and which one is on the right. The DVI slots on the X1900 cards set the default positions. The left DVI slot is for the left monitor, and the right DVI is for the right monitor.

I will try to install Catalyst 6.7 with CP to check out there anyway.

Update:
I can't install Catalyst 6.7. No X1950XTX support. Have you tried ATI Tray Tools yet?

oscarin · July 25th, 2007, 09:04 PM

I really don't want ATI Tray Tools managing my desktop.

The only way I could try it is to install ATI Tray, then change the setting on the monitors and then uninstall it. In my experience I've found it to be an intrusive tool , meaning it throws drivers on the \system32\ folder.

And since I've recently fixed a huge problem on my configuration, I don't want anything to mess it.

I'm going to try your suggestion of using Total Commander to compare two registry backups and see what exactly is the registry entry that activates the second monitor, and the other entry that enables extended desktop.

Thanks abunch!

oscarin · July 27th, 2007, 12:41 AM

Ok, more update on this issue.

Definetely the ATI HOTKEY POLLER triggers the second monitor to be disabled, and then I'm going back to non-extended desktop.

So even if there is a registry key that's being changed by Windows to enable Extended Desktop, once you restart the machine, ATI HOTKEY loads and gives an order to disable/shut down the second monitor.

I've tried using Total Commander, and compared both .reg files (with extended desktop, and the one back to sinlge monitors) and it tells me that the two files are identical.

There is definetely some registry key value that I need to change on the HOTKEY POLLER settings to avoid the second monitor of being shut down.

**Regeneration** · July 27th, 2007, 12:45 AM

Run services.msc and set this service to manual, and make an .bat file with "net start "Ati HotKey Poller"" and put it in Start Menu > Programs > Startup.