I recently bought a new Dell U2715H monitor which I, temporarily, need to be able to use with a Windows XP machine. The problem is I can only use in it in VGA mode (640 x 480) which means the display is seriously hard to work with. When I boot up normally the screen goes black and I get message telling me to set the resolution to one of the supported resolutions such as the native 2560x1440 @ 60Hz mode and I have to reboot.
However, my Asus video card (ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO) doesn't support the native resolution. It does support 1920x1080@60Hz and so does the monitor though.
So, I've tried repeatedly to select this in the display settings. In the Control Panel, this resolution appears in "List All Modes" (I have checked the box to not display unsupported modes). Whenever I select this resolution, I'm prompted to restart and restarting Windows normally always gets me back the black screen and the message from the Dell monitor telling me to use a supported resolution. IOW, the display settings change in Windows doesn't "stick".
I've used this monitor with a newer machine and it works fine. When I use it with the old machine I'm using the HDMI cable with a DVI to HDMI adapter (there are no HDMI ports off my motherboard or the video card).
In VGA mode after Windows loads I also get a message saying: "The Catalyst Control Center is not supported by the driver version of your graphics adapter." Is that a red herring? It is in VGA mode after all. I tried to update the AMD Radeon drivers but couldn't. In VGA mode I was unable to complete the installation process because I couldn't resize the window to click on the "Next" button. I'm not sure this would have helped any way.
In VGA mode, MS Windows sees the monitor as a generic plug and play and uses driver 5.1.2001.0 dated 6/6/2001. The adapter driver Windows is using is AMD driver 8.970.100.3000 dated 7/3/2012. I cannot load the Dell drivers for the new monitor because, to my surprise, Dell does not provide drivers for XP anymore and Windows would not let me install the unapproved drivers that came with the new monitor. I called Dell customer support and told me to buy Windows 7--not helpful. (I know MS is no longer supporting XP but it's still the second most common OS worldwide according to Netmarketshare).
Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get this monitor working until I'm done transitioning to the new machine? Thanks.