Windows 2000 & Dual Monitor Problem

[TEDHARRIS 0]

We have been using dual monitors at work under windows 98 and really like it. We are using 2 video cards to do this: an AGP video card, and a PCI video card (started doing this before the Matrox Dual-Head technology was released or else would have gone that route.)

 

When I upgraded one of the PCs to windows 2000, the PCI video card is "disabled". It's an S3 Virge card, and of course S3 doesn't have any drivers for windows 2000.

 

Any ideas? Anybody else using dual monitors under windows 2000?

 

Thanks,

 

Ted

[felix 0]

Had the same problem.

 

Although the S3 chipsets will work fine under Win2k in single monitor setup, the HCL has no S3 chipsets listed in multi mode.

 

Sorry mate, you have to get another cheap, non-S3 card for multi setup.

 

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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.

[Seldzar 0]

Actually I used a sis 4mb 6326 POS vid card for my second monitor and it wasn't multi monitor supported. To fix your problem in your bios set your init first display to your PCI card so your s3 is the main card on boot. Once in windows it should have set your AGP card to your main card in display settings. What is the agp card? Now I use a Voodoo Banshee PCI for my second monitor with a v3 3000 agp

 

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§E£DZÅR

http://www.win2knews.com

[PinkPanther 0]

SeldZar's reply is right on the money. I use a TNT2 Viper Ultra (AGP) and an S3 Stealth 540 (PCI). Dual monitor mode only worked after I set the BIOS to boot from the PCI card and then sent the OS to make the AGP card the primary display. So far, all is well.

[felix 0]

That's cool unless you have 2x PCI Trio64's which i what i was trying to use, then you are up the duff.

 

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[spacey 0]

err, but if you set your crappy s3 card as primary.. what happens when you play games. does it know that you'd want to use your agp card? cuz i have a s3 virge also but it wouldnt' go multimonitor with my tnt2

[djmiller 0]

Here's my situation:

I have an Intel TC-430HX motherboard with an on-board 2MB S3 ViRGE adapter (the kind that came installed with the Toshiba Infinia 7200 desktop machine). I have the most current update to the Bios (and, according to Intel, the last version ever). The board does not support AGP, and the Bios does not allow complete disabling of the on-board video adapter. (A previous version of the Bios did pretend to, but even with the on-board "disabled," Win98 and Win2k can still detect the adapter and attempt to use it.) When another video card is installed in the system (in my case, a Diamond Viper v550 PCI), the Bios automatically (and without any option to change) makes the installed card the primary display adapter and the on-board adapter secondary.

 

Problem: Windows 2000 doesn't support the ViRGE adapter as a secondary video card (although Win98 does). (S3 blames Microsoft for this; Microsoft says it's S3's responsibility to do something about it; S3 says it's a "legacy" device and will have no further development.) The consequence for trying is that neither graphic adapter device will start (Code 10 in Device Manager), and you get standard VGA on the primary monitor only.

 

It would appear that, on this computer, I'm forced to use the on-board ViRGE exclusively, as installing any other video card puts the system in a configuration where video is sent back to the dark ages.

 

Is there a way to make this work?

[NotSoSmart 0]

I use an old steath 3d 2 meg for a second monitor and W2k lists other S3 cards when I went to load drivers, but my steath 64 2 meg Vram was not supported and it is a better card