Problem with connecting T61, advanced mini dock and 2 monitors

Hi
I´m hoping someone can help me.
I just bought a T61 (8889 W6C model) with Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M grapich card, lenovo advanced mini dock and two lenovo D221 (22" inch) monitors.
I use the dock and the two external monitors when I work at home. The resolution of the monitors is 1680x1050. But I can not get the monitor that is connected to the DVI port on the docking bay to go any higher than 1280x1024, the one who is connected to the VGA port is ok.
I´ve tried everything in the Nvidia settings and the thinkVantage settings but I always get the "signal input out of range" messege. I´ve tried the Lenovo and Nvidia homepages and google it but I´ve have not found any solutions.

With hope someone has a answer to this problem.

Sincerely,
TylerD

 

There should be some settings in BIOS to output from the dock.

 

Thank you for your answer, Arkit3kt.

I looked in the BIOS but did not find any settings for the docking bay there.
This is very strange. The Nvidia settings detects the analog monitor as Lenovo D221 but the DVI detects the monitor as Lenovo L201.

Do you have any other ideas for me? I have run out of ideas, tried everything I could think of.

TylerD

 

Are you trying to do a dual screen setup?

 

Yes, I am trying dual screen. I now have two monitors connected to the docking bay. But I´m having these resolution problems with the monitor connected to the DVI.

 

Probably there is not enough bandwidth for the two hi-res displays at once. But It's just a speculation. Have you tired connecting a single display to the DVI port of the docking station? You should try it with both of them to see if there isn't anything wrong with the one you have connected to the DVI port now.

 

The strange thing is, is when I connect only the DVI monitor I still only get 1280x1024 resolution and Nvidia control panel stills identifies the monitor as Lenovo L201p instead of Lenovo D221.

Do you thing that it would make any difference if I used a DVI-D dual link cable?

 

I don't think so. I guess the single link cable can do 1920 x 1200 resolution.

 

I send Nvidia email and asked them what they thought. This is their answer:

You said "This is very strange. The Nvidia settings detects the analog monitor as Lenovo D221 but the DVI detects the monitor as Lenovo L201" Possibly there is a problem with the EDID (display data structure which is used to determine supported resolutions etc) for several reasons: as you point out, the monitor is being misidentified, and also, you are getting a default resolution instead of the native resolution. If it is an EDID problem, please contact the monitor vendor (Lenovo).

Otherwise Lenovo's User's Guide at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/42x3595_a5.pdf states in their specifications that external monitors up to 2048x1536 are supported so this may be a bug or limitation of their implementation, for which I suggest you contact Lenovo.

I´m not sure what EDID is and but is there anything that I can do to fix it or do I have to try to go through my Lenovo dealer?

 

Tyler, have you tried using the Presentation Manager software? I've had a similar problem with a single external LCD connected to T61p (nvidia fx570). When tweaking around the nvidia panels or simple windows' screen settings, I got the same "signal out of range" message as you are getting. After launching the Presentation Managaer (bundled with my Thinkpad) it just worked. Not to mention that it was a 1920x1200 res, which is way higher than what you're trying to pull. In Presentation Manager you'll probably need to define a new scheme for the specific monitors of yours, but after that, I think it should just work.

I hope this helps,

 

Hil Kilgore

Yes, I have tried everything in presentation manager but it does not seem to work. I´m starting to think there is just something wrong with this model of monitors. But I hope that Lenovo support will answer me sometime with a solution to this.