Had a weird issue occur today where booting into Windows XP resulted in no image displayed in the monitor. Initially the BIOS image and startup screen for Windows XP displayed fine. But the moment things switched to the Windows XP deskop, the monitor displayed a "no signal" message.

I am using an odd video connection setup. The GPU is connected via a Startech Active Displayport -> HDMI connector, which connects to an HDMI cable which connects to the monitor. The reason for this was to enable both a 75Hz refresh rate (which the monitor natively supports) and automatic aspect ratio switching between 16:10 and 4:3. Previously using either just HDMI or Displayport would fail to enable both of these features at the same time.

I tried removing the adapter and connecting directly to HDMI. This worked and the Windows XP desktop was now visible, albeit at only 60 Hz. But reconnecting the adapter once again produced a "no signal" on the monitor.

I tried removing and reconnecting everything, trying a couple different Displayport sockets on the GPU. Also tried setting things to different (lower) screen resolutions. Even booting in safe mode failed to display an image with the adapter, despite the BIOS and Windows XP start up screens still showing an image prior to reaching the desktop.

I was finally ready to give up after shutting everything down, but booted it up once more... and suddenly the adapter-with-HDMI cable was working again. Once again I could set 75Hz display. I tried out a number of games and confirmed that aspect ratio switching was also working properly.

I have no idea what happened. Could the adapter or cable potentially be failing in some way?

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-09-15, 22:39:

I am using an odd video connection setup. The GPU is connected via a Startech Active Displayport -> HDMI connector, which connects to an HDMI cable which connects to the monitor. The reason for this was to enable both a 75Hz refresh rate (which the monitor natively supports) and automatic aspect ratio switching between 16:10 and 4:3. Previously using either just HDMI or Displayport would fail to enable both of these features at the same time.

Don't think you need an adapter for that. I'm using a simple DisplayPort cable to connect my GTX 970 to the ProArt, and it scales 4:3 resolutions correctly. Also, I can select 75Hz for 1920x1200 just fine.

Things that might be relevant: I'm using Nvidia drivers 355.98 (modded) and a modified driver for the ProArt as described here.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-16, 04:24:

Don't think you need an adapter for that. I'm using a simple DisplayPort cable to connect my GTX 970 to the ProArt, and it scales 4:3 resolutions correctly. Also, I can select 75Hz for 1920x1200 just fine.

When I was originally setting things up, this was the only configuration I could get to work properly. I suspect it’s partially because the ProArt monitor is being detected as a television by Windows XP.

Things that might be relevant: I'm using Nvidia drivers 355.98 (modded) and a modified driver for the ProArt as described here.

I need to try the modified INF for the monitor and see if that works. It would be good to have the monitor properly recognized by XP.

Don’t remember which nVidia driver version I’m on, I’ll have to double check that.

Did a couple things today.

I first tried swapping out the HDMI cable + Displayport adapter for a regular Displayport cable. Upon testing, everything seem to work fine. I was still getting 75Hz refresh rate and aspect ratio switching seemed fine, as the monitor would correctly detect and go into 4:3 mode when appropriate.

I have no idea why this hadn't worked when I was originally setting up the machine with this monitor. Perhaps I had a faulty cable at the time or just hadn't set things up correctly. Regardless, I can now run it from a regular Displayport cable with no janky adapter setup.

Second, I installed the modified .INF file for the ProArt monitor. This worked fine as the monitor is now showing as the ProArt 24 as opposed to a generic Plug 'n Play monitor.

However, nVidia's graphics settings still seems to think this a TV for some reason.

I checked my driver version and I'm currently using 368.81, which I had modded to add support for the 980 Ti. Not sure if downgrading the drivers to an earlier version would make a difference here.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-09-16, 21:47:

However, nVidia's graphics settings still seems to think this a TV for some reason.

If it helps, here's how that screen looks like on my system with 355.98 drivers:

I've read on this forum and elsewhere that drivers newer than that can cause issues under WinXP. There are some notes on that in this thread. And while I have limited experience with later driver versions, at least one game (Risen 2) had problems with those, which were solved by downgrading to 355.98. For reference, that version works fine with GTX 980 Ti cards as well.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-16, 22:03:

If it helps, here's how that screen looks like on my system with 355.98 drivers:

The attachment Nvidia_Resolution_Settings.png is no longer available

Can you post what the "adjust desktop size and position" tab looks like please?

Barley wrote on 2025-09-17, 00:47:

Can you post what the "adjust desktop size and position" tab looks like please?

Sure thing, here you go:

I imagine you're curious about the scaling options, and there are none when the card is connected via DisplayPort. In comparison, this post shows that screen with the same 355.98 driver, but I was using a native DVI monitor (LG Flatron L1753HR) connected with a normal DVI cable. In that case, all the relevant scaling options were there.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-17, 06:46:

I imagine you're curious about the scaling options, and there are none when the card is connected via DisplayPort. In comparison, this post shows that screen with the same 355.98 driver, but I was using a native DVI monitor (LG Flatron L1753HR) connected with a normal DVI cable. In that case, all the relevant scaling options were there.

Yes, I wanted to see the scaling options. I have the same experience as you. Unfortunately, neither of my two 1920x1200 monitors have a DVI port, so if I want scaling on a Nvidia card in Windows XP, if HAVE to use the ProArt (not interested in trying VGA). Thanks for confirming.

Downgraded to the 355.98 nVidia driver.

The change resolution screen no longer thinks this monitor as a television set.

Barley wrote on 2025-09-17, 15:26:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-17, 06:46:

I imagine you're curious about the scaling options, and there are none when the card is connected via DisplayPort. In comparison, this post shows that screen with the same 355.98 driver, but I was using a native DVI monitor (LG Flatron L1753HR) connected with a normal DVI cable. In that case, all the relevant scaling options were there.

Yes, I wanted to see the scaling options. I have the same experience as you. Unfortunately, neither of my two 1920x1200 monitors have a DVI port, so if I want scaling on a Nvidia card in Windows XP, if HAVE to use the ProArt (not interested in trying VGA). Thanks for confirming.

I retract my statement. After running the command listed in this post (Re: Building a Retro PC for the 21st century - please advise on what I missed), I was able to activate GPU scaling on the driver, which should work on any 1920x1200 monitor.

Barley wrote on 2025-09-23, 01:19:

I retract my statement. After running the command listed in this post (Re: Building a Retro PC for the 21st century - please advise on what I missed), I was able to activate GPU scaling on the driver, which should work on any 1920x1200 monitor.

I remember seeing that mentioned here, and I too have tried it in the past. It did work... for a while, but then I ran into some issues.

For example, when running Splinter Cell at 1600x1200 the aspect ratio was correct, until the game dropped down to something like 640x480 while playing a cutscene movie between missions. After the movie was finished, the scaling was reset to "stretch to fit" forcing me to run the command again. It also didn't always persist after rebooting the machine.

Might have been a local issue on my system, possibly dependent on the monitor that I used at the time, but it annoyed me enough that I bought the ProArt just to avoid dealing with it.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-23, 02:59:

I remember seeing that mentioned here, and I too have tried it in the past. It did work... for a while, but then I ran into some […]
Show full quote

Barley wrote on 2025-09-23, 01:19:

I retract my statement. After running the command listed in this post (Re: Building a Retro PC for the 21st century - please advise on what I missed), I was able to activate GPU scaling on the driver, which should work on any 1920x1200 monitor.

I remember seeing that mentioned here, and I too have tried it in the past. It did work... for a while, but then I ran into some issues.

For example, when running Splinter Cell at 1600x1200 the aspect ratio was correct, until the game dropped down to something like 640x480 while playing a cutscene movie between missions. After the movie was finished, the scaling was reset to "stretch to fit" forcing me to run the command again. It also didn't always persist after rebooting the machine.

Might have been a local issue on my system, possibly dependent on the monitor that I used at the time, but it annoyed me enough that I bought the ProArt just to avoid dealing with it.

If I run into similar issues down the road, I will gladly retract my retraction.

I’ve been thinking about turning my current XP setup into a triple boot system with Windows XP (32-bit), Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

I’ve been getting more nostalgic for Windows 7 and I think this would be a decent system to use for it. My previous Windows 7 system was an i7-4790k with the same GTX 980 Ti installed in this current system. The 3770k would be a slight downgrade, but I would think still quite capable for games in the 2010’s.

My original Win 7 system had a triple monitor setup (1920x1080 x 3). I kind of miss that as having 5-6 feet worth of horizontal screen space was really nice for FPS games. In theory, I think it would be possible to add a pair of additional ProArt monitors. This would create a 5760x1200 display and running at 75Hz. However, I’m not sure how well it would run with later games since it would both be a higher resolution and upper frame rate compared to my original system, plus coupled with a slight processor downgrade. There is also the issue of physical space as my current desk doesn’t have quite enough room for 3 monitors. Still… it is tempting.

As for Vista, I’m never used that OS before and am curious to test it out. If I was going dual boot XP/Windows 7, it would be trivial to add a third OS. The current case I am using has space for three 2.5” drives. It would be easy to enough to dedicate an SSD to each OS and then multi-boot with BootIt Bare Metal (which I use on my all-in-one Pentium 4).

Between my Pentium 4 build and this build, this would cover every OS from DOS 6.22 all the way to Windows 7 in only two systems.

I had a Windows 7 build with Core 2 Quad QX9650 and GTX 970. The CPU was overclocked to 3.8Ghz.

I was able to run Sleeping Dogs (2012), Tombraider (2013), Deus Ex Mankind Divided (2016), GTA V (2015). Though I will say that framerates were low. Probably 25-30fps on low settings. I forget now.

CPU was the bottleneck. This was before I got into retro gaming. It was my gaming PC that I owned since 2008. GPU and storage were upgraded over time. Originally it started with dual boot XP/Vista and had two 8800 GTS 512 in SLI and RAID 0 10k RPM veliciraptors.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-09-30, 15:46:

I’ve been thinking about turning my current XP setup into a triple boot system with Windows XP (32-bit), Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

I’ve been getting more nostalgic for Windows 7 and I think this would be a decent system to use for it. My previous Windows 7 system was an i7-4790k with the same GTX 980 Ti installed in this current system. The 3770k would be a slight downgrade, but I would think still quite capable for games in the 2010’s.

I think your right in that performance will be about the same. My build is a bit slower (X5687 3.60GHZ & GTX 780) but runs my only 2 games (Euro Truck Sim2, Farming Simulator 2019) that wont run on XP with max settings .

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-09-30, 15:46:

Between my Pentium 4 build and this build, this would cover every OS from DOS 6.22 all the way to Windows 7 in only two systems.

Do you have Win95, Win98, Me, NT, 2k installed or just say Win98 that represents the 9x era?
As Vista would fit the same category as Win98 FE, really there is nothing it can do that Win7 cant do better.
By all means install Vista and have a play for a bit but it'll get boring after a while then go unused
Much better to install it on some other old PC/laptop and keep this one "clean" so to speak

I have purged all of Vista long ago. I went from XP 32bit to Win7 64bit and never even missed Vista. If you are not nostalgic for the OS, I don't really see the point. Why would you want Vista?

What I did however is I also installed win11 on the Ivy Bridge PC (parallel with Win XP/32 and Win7/64), allowing me to quickly test if the game is win 11 capable. The results did surprise me a few times so far.

chinny22 wrote on 2025-10-04, 03:11:

Do you have Win95, Win98, Me, NT, 2k installed or just say Win98 that represents the 9x era?

Yes, I have all those operating systems installed (and Win 3.1 as well).

As Vista would fit the same category as Win98 FE, really there is nothing it can do that Win7 cant do better.
By all means install Vista and have a play for a bit but it'll get boring after a while then go unused
Much better to install it on some other old PC/laptop and keep this one "clean" so to speak

This is why I'd install it on a stand-alone drive. Then if I wanted to get rid of it, it would be easy enough to just remove the drive altogether.

ux-3 wrote on 2025-10-05, 16:59:

If you are not nostalgic for the OS, I don't really see the point. Why would you want Vista?

Because I've never used it before. Same reason I installed Windows Me on my Pentium 4 setup. It's fun to try operating systems I missed the first time around.

Pretty much this is the build I have with a Titan X instead of the 980ti(which I have put in storage). A solid OP XP gaming rig. I triple boot with XP, Win 10 and Linux Mint. Honestly it is the gaming PC I tend to use as I only play older XP era games.

By the way what is the consensus here on the best driver version for the 9xx and Titan X series cards - 355 or 368?

I am using the 368 version as it is an easy download from Phil`s website and does not need any tinkering with the files. Does the 355 have any benefit over the 368 driver.

Custom resolution support, and possibly game specific driver issues with 368.
First one can be somewhat disregarded if you plan to HEX mod higher HDMI bandwidth though...