Solved! Old monitor as second screen for laptop "input not supported" - drivers updated,

[jorisb96]

Hi People,

I'm new to the forum, I hope you can help me with a problem. I've looked through the already existing treads but couldn't find the solution I’m looking for.

I have this old monitor I want to use as an second screen on my laptop. Quick overview of the specs:

laptop: MSI GL62M, bought in 2017, with Geforce GTX 1050 Ti

External monitor: Acer x223w, bought between 2007-2010

The monitor only has a VGA cable, so I use a small adapter piece to connect it to my laptop with HDMI port. When connected, the screen says "input not supported" (I’m Dutch, in Dutch it's says "ingang niet ondersteund") I’ve tried updating my drives but get a message my drivers are all up to date. when I go to my device manager, under displays I do see two PnP monitors, and when i disconnect the external monitor one of these PnP monitors disappears. Under advanced display settings my laptop does see two screens, "display 1" and "display 2: X223W Q".

I'm suspecting that the monitor might be just too old for the newer software my laptop runs on. I was thinking if it might be possible to somehow run older drivers only for the external monitor. Does anyone know how to do this, or another way of fixing this issue? I’ve tried solutions I could find on google but with no success.

Greets,

Joris

 

[AlHuneke]

I've used some old monitors successfully. The VGA standard has been around for many years. I would be suspicious of the HDMI/VGA adapter you are using. You might see if this is available on Amazon and what the reviewers have to say. I also wonder if there might be some issue with how you are setting the display resolution, refresh rate, etc. There are a lot of those types of settings scattered around in both the settings pages and the video driver control panel. You need to look at the specs for your monitor and make sure it supports what you have selected. Normally, the PC would handle this for you, but I'm not sure how that might work going through the adapter. Start with the lowest setting first and see what happens.

 

[jorisb96]

Thank you for your reply. I've checked the reviews on multiple sites, most of them are good, just connect and everything works. Some are negative, but they got a defect product which made no connection at all or ordered the wrong cable.

I've googled the monitor, it has a refresh rate of max 75 Hz and resolution 1680 x 1050. my laptop has 120Hz screen so I changed the settings to 60 Hz. Also put my resolution at 1680x1050 but I'm not sure it necessarily used these settings to send to the monitor. I couldn’t see or change the settings of the monitor on my laptop, and the menu button on the monitor doesn’t give a settings menu or anything.

I'll try putting al the settings at low and work my way up from there, My main guess however is that my drivers are "to new" to communicate with the monitor. As mentioned I already tried updating these but I’m running the latest version of all my drivers. Anybody got an idea?

 

[jorisb96]

Update: You were right about the adapter. I've connected the screen to the PC of a friend of mine which uses the same type of adapter. With his adapter it worked, with mine it doesn't. Same cables and everything. I'm gonna send mine retour this week and wait for a new one.