Dell External Monitor Hooked to T400

I have a T400 (P8400 with ATI radeon dedicated graphics card, 3 gigs of ram, vista) and i hooked it up to an external dell monitor with a VGA cable.

My ATI Catalyst Control Center says the max resolution for the laptop is 1280 x 800 (60 Hz Refresh rate).

My dell E228WFP monitor max resolution is 1920 x 1080 (75 Hz refresh rate).

However my dell monitor cannot get the max resolution. The only two settings i get above the 1280 x 800 are (1280 x 1024) and (1440 x 900), and they look awful so i have it set at (1280 x 800).

Is there any way to achieve the max resolution on my dell monitor (1920 x 1080) while hooked up to my T400? What if i got a vga to dvi adaptor, would that improve the resolution?

Also every time i restart my computer, my dell monitor settings start at (800 x 600) and i have to constantly adjust the settings. even after i tell the computer to accept my new settings , after a restart it reverts back. Is there any way for it to remember my preferred settings?

thanks for your time.

 

have you tried to set the resolution using the intel display tray console?

 

not sure how to access it. I checked in control panel and in ati catalyst control center but theres no option for intel display tray console.

Could you please tell me how i can do this?

thanks.

 

use ATI console to change the resolution.

 

I have tried changing the resolution in ati console without any luck. I'm wondering if the max resolution of the laptop will only allow a certain resolution for the dell monitor. but i still can change it to 1280x800 and 1440x900 but not the ideal 1920 x 1080.

 

it will allow something like WQXGA.

 

in that case there must be some settings i can change to get 1920 x 1080. ive tried ati control center, changed refresh rate but nothing.

ive tried everything i can think of, so im asking some of the knowledgeable people here if anyone knows?

 

I have my T400 hooked up to a 22" ASUS running at 1920x1080. Use the presentation director, make a new profile with VGA/External Monitor/1920x1080/75hz and apply.

 

Thanks very much, didn't know about this presentation director. I installed the latest updates and tried as you suggested, but i'm running into some problems again.
Heres my settings for the new scheme:


And when i click "test" or "apply", I get this error message:


I tried playing around with the settings and the only one that will work again is the 1280x800 for the external monitor. Every other setting I change gives me the error message.

I swear nothing is easy for me. always run into some kind of problem Lol. Do you know if theres something I'm missing?

 

Hey, I tried the same settings as you and I got the same error as well. Tried using the 3470 with the same settings but there was no difference.

However, the settings were fine if I lowered the refresh rate to 60hz. In fact, any settings I used with 75hz gave the same error. No idea why though.

 

hmm, don't know why I can't seem to get it to work on my monitor. Even after changing the refresh rate to 60hz I still get the error. Only if I change the resolution to 1280x800 will it work.
I know my dell is an old model, but i've got all the latest drivers for it (through windows update) so it shouldn't be a problem.

Gawd this is frustrating.
thanks for your help though.

 

if you can go to a computer store and try out the other 22 inch monitors and see whether they work, this will determine whether the problem is with monitor your vga port.