PCG-TR1A External LCD Problem

I recently purchased a Samsung 932BW 19" LCD monitor to setup a pseudo-Desktop with my Sony Vaio PCG-TR1A laptop at home. I'm sad to say I'm unable to obtain a decent resolution aside from 1024x768. It is a widescreen LCD and thus the image is stretched. When I try a resolution like what my laptop screen uses (which as you know is also widescreen, 1280x768), the quality is horrible. I'm unable to even begin to go to the recommended resolution of 1440x900. I installed all the drivers that came with the monitor to no avail.

Am I screwed by vaio's graphics card? If so, what are my options for upgrading? It may be of use to know that I am running my laptop and external monitor through a VEG-N RTV entertainment generator. In other words, My laptop's vga out runs to this box, then I hook my LCD up to the box from it's respective vga out.

Thanks in advance..

Bryan

 

Any thoughts or suggestions at all? I'm really clueless on this one.

Bry

 

I'm not sure this is any help, but I used to have a TR5 and it worked perfectly with a 19" external monitor. I don't know if the TR1 and the TR5 have the same graphics card, so this might be irrelevant.

This is going back a few years so my memory is hazy, but I know that the output to the external monitor was the same resolution as the laptop screen. So I would imagine that if everything were working correctly, you should be able to get a widescreen output, even if the resolution isn't as high as 1440x900

 

Was your TR5 widescreen? As I said before the standard ratio outputs decently but is obviously stretched and way under the monitors capabilities. When I switch to widescreen the quality is even worse.

Does anyone know if this is even normal?? I just want to know if I should still be trying to make this work if it's not even possible

Bryan

 

Yes, the whole TR series was widescreen, and I believe they all operated at the same resolution. Maybe i didn't explain clearly before- yes, your TR1 should output a widescreen display to your external monitor. If it doesn't do this, something is wrong. It could be a driver problem, or it could be that you're not adjusting the graphics settings correctly, or something else. Sorry to not be more helpful, i'm no expert

 

***UPDATE***

Problem solved! After trying Powerstrip to no avail (although getting a slightly better resolution), I happened to stumble upon the name of my chipset and decided to give it a whirl in Google. Doing so led me to this page:

http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/intel852gm/

After downloading the latest drivers, all my problems were miraculously solved! My notebook LCD and external LCD are now registered separately in the display properties, and when I go to my external LCD, it automatically put me at the max-rec. resolution of 1440x900! It looks great! Thanks for the help and I hope this helps someone else!