Dual head monitors in Vista

[Scoff]

long story short, I used to run 2 monitors with an old ati radeon 7000 card under XP, worked fine. I went to Vista with the new machine a couple of years ago and didn't bother setting the dual monitors up.

I want to run dual monitors again so got hold of another radeon 7000 knowing it worked OK before, only I can't find a sodding way to make it run in Vista - no drivers, not Vista compliant, usual crap..

I've ordered an vNidia geforce 8400GS card and DVI adaptor, I think this should work OK. what I wanted to know is:

anyone any experience of setting this lot up in vista ? I've downloaded the nVidia drivers from their website - should this lot include support for multi view / dual monitor setups ?

anyone any idea how I might make the Radeon work in vista ? or should I give up on that completely.

PS, I'm not a gamer, couldn't care less for GPU speeds and all that crap, I just need the desktop space!

[UNICRONICUS]

ATi should have the drivers on their website for that card, if not, try this site for drivers http://www.guru3d.com/. Both cards should support configuration for which monitor is primary and secondary so I can't see a problem with that. Being a Vista novice I wouldn't know where exactly to look.

[Scoff]

I have tried already, it's written in a few places that Vista does not support the development of drivers for hardware it deems to old to work well enough!

[Andrew Cooke]

I have tried already, it's written in a few places that Vista does not support the development of drivers for hardware it deems to old to work well enough!

which is 'microsoft' for bend over and touch your toes

[phase i 16 v turbo]

Download windows 7 Beta and give it ago, if you get no joy with vista.

[Arrows]

Download windows 7 Beta and give it ago, if you get no joy with vista.

Anyone running this at present?

Whats your views?

[Mudslinger]

did u only install the display driver for the ati card or did u install the catylist driver?

there is a set up section in the ati catylist to run dual monitors , ive only tried it once and done it with no probs and im running vista , i was not aware the op system would have a bearing on this ?

[Scoff]

ah, now I read about the catalyst set, and came to the conclusion I needed the RC1 set, which I downloaded from ati. However, it says that it cannot find any suitable hardware installed in my machine, and does not list radeon 7000 in it's compatability list. I tried to learn which cards wetre supported by which catalyst suite, but got nowhere, fast. Or, 7000 is just not supported maybe. I came across someone on a forum claiming his worked with the 7200 drivers in vista, but I could not find 7200 drivers for vista either.

[Mudslinger]

ah, now I read about the catalyst set, and came to the conclusion I needed the RC1 set, which I downloaded from ati. However, it says that it cannot find any suitable hardware installed in my machine, and does not list radeon 7000 in it's compatability list. I tried to learn which cards wetre supported by which catalyst suite, but got nowhere, fast. Or, 7000 is just not supported maybe. I came across someone on a forum claiming his worked with the 7200 drivers in vista, but I could not find 7200 drivers for vista either.

it is a fairly old card tbh , the first pc i bought had a ati 9800 radeon card and that was in 2000, infact coming to thinkabout it i have an old ati x850 agp thats just lying there yours if you want it ? bit of a step up from the 7000

[Scoff]

yes, it's oldskool, like me. I should not be suprised that it isn't supported, but still irritates me though

I should have this nVidia geforce 8400GS thing tomorrow, still an older card but atleast supported by Vista, but if that fails to work also then I'll let you know ofcourse, would have to be dual head ? I think not all cards that have 2 monitor sockets are dual head ? I lost track of current PC architecture in about 1993 when everybody bought Windows

[Scoff]

sorted! 8400GS card worked fine, and the drivers from nVidia's website worked fine too, it even came supplied with an "nVidia control panel" making it easy to setup multi displays

[dave j gtt]

good work HaPpY dAyS