Sony Vaio 1290x - screen keeps shrinking for no reason.

This just started to happen a few days ago -- when I was picking the Z up. I might have inadvertently pressed some buttons towards the bottom -- I am recovering form surgery so getting up and down some time is a little bit of a pain.

I have an external monitor attached so I can watch stuff while I am in bed: Dell 2709 wb.

For some reason, all of a sudden the Vaio screen keeps shrinking in size for no apparent reason. When I shut the lap top down and then turn it on, it more often than not comes on as a smaller resolution and 4x3 window rather than the 16 x9 (or 10 --I don't remember which.)

I go to fix the resolution and click on the recommended one which is 1080 x 1920 -- and it goes back to normal. Then if I click on to duplicate the screen to the external Dell monitor, the Sony screen suddenly drops to the 4x3 window and the smaller resolution. I have to go back to the screen resolution to fix it -- which most of the time doesn't work.

Then I disconnect the external monitor and the Sony screen more often than not -- but not always -- goes to the proper resolution. If not, I go back to adjust the screen resolution.

I connect and repeat until one of the times, the resolution on the SONY is fine (and the Dell looks fine as well.) This usually takes 2 3 times of connect and disconnect.

I've never had this issue before and both laptop and monitor are over 3 years old.

Did I do something to trigger this? I've checked all the settings I can think of on both the Sony and the Dell and have not come up with anything.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

What cable type are you using and have you tried another (known good) cable?


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That's an interesting idea.

I am using a VGA cable and it is true that I just switched out the one that came with the Dell Monitor with another one from another Dell monitor I have that is a smaller size. I did this right around the time that this problem happened.

I can't imagine that the cable would make a difference like this -- but maybe so.

Some new info.

Normally the screen resolution on both the Sony laptop and the Dell Monitor is 1920 x1280. The adjust screen resolution shows that for both when the duplicate the screen page to the external monitor is not on but the external monitor is attached.

But when I press duplicate screen to the external monitor -- the resolution to 1680 x 1050 with no option in the drop down box to select back to the 1920x 1280.

And then suddenly after a few duplicate and disconnects -- suddenly they are both back to the 1920 x 1280.

It is an NVIDIA dsiply card. I've even gone to the card's control panel and played around with a few settings. It opens up in the correct default and as soon as push duplicate, it treats the monitor as analog, even though prior to the connect -- it treats it as a 1920 x 1280 digital monitor -- which it is 9as was the Dell monitor this VGA cable came form -- even newer then the monitor I am having problems with.

Don't know if this triggers any ideas -- but any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

I would try the other VGA cable, or DVI to be sure.

If that's not it, your card could be starting to fail. Some furmark stressing might be able to reveal other issues. I recently used furmark on a dying GPU for a diagnosis, and was able to kill the card permanently, so be warned.


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Any possibility to use digital cable instead? HDMI or Displayport would give better image quality too.

That sounds like the monitor information isn't properly transmitted from monitor to PC and that causes PC to change resolution as it believes the monitor was changed on the fly. It could be just a bad cable.

 

I tried with a different VGA cable -- made no difference. It seems rather arbitrary when all of a sudden the resolution is 1080 x 1920 on both monitors. I try connecting and disconnecting - do it through Fn F7 or through the control panel and all of a sudden doing these things repeatedly -- the resolution suddenly adjust correctly.

Sometimes the resolution drop down box allows me to adjust the resolution properly but most the time it suddenly stops giving a 1080 x 1920 option.

What I do find -- is that once it is working OK -- if, for example, I go from adapter to battery and accept the adjustment in performance -- it sends the display haywire again -- and it doesn't matter whether I am going form adapter to battery or vice versa -- now it almost undoes the proper display.

It is clear that the laptop is not recognizing the external monitor as a Dell 2709w which also has 1080x 1920 display. At some point I got the laptop to recognize a "third" external monitor and it recognized that one as the Dell 2709w but that didn't solve the problem And it was treating the situation as if there were two external monitors -- a "Generic Non PnP monitor" and the Dell. when I tried to remove the "generic" it removed the Dell and I am back to just the Sony desktop and the Generic as the two options.

I've tried downloading the Dell drivers again.

I also tried with an HDMI cable and that was even worse.

Nothing seems to work.

Right now I've spent an hour trying to get the 1080 x 1920 display back on both the laptop and the external Dell monitor to no avail. Usually it doesn't take so long.

Help! ... :-(

*UPDATE* I discovered that I could get to the NVIDA Control Panel while In duplicate screen mode on the external display with an option to revert back to native resolution - and voila -- 1080 x1920 -- all fixed.

I think I've done this before -- but it didn't quite register exactly what I did -- the display still got out of kilter afterwards -- but we'll see now.