Screen resolution problem 27in iMac with Bootcamp

Hi,
So far I haven't come across any answers to this problem in my searches of the forum. Can anyone help?

I have successfully installed Windows 7 Ultimate on my late 2010 iMac 27in which uses the Ati Radeon HD5750 graphics card. I have downloaded all the Apple updates for Bootcamp (now 3.2).
Despite all my efforts and downloading the latest drivers from Ati I cannot achieve any higher resolution that 1600x1200, which looks bad because the aspect ratio is wrong - it gives a stretched affect.

In Mac OS - latest upgrade of Snow Leopard I run the screen at 2560x1440 and although the Ati software in Windows tells me that the screen is capable of this resolution it is not available for selection in the driver setup.

Anyone kindly have any suggestions?
Thanks.

Tim

Welcome to the forum.

It 'should' default to the native resolution.

However, there are graphics card drivers much newer than those included with the bootcamp drivers.

Go to to AMDs website

From the drivers dropdown lists choose:
Notebook graphics
Radeon HD series
Mobility Radeon HD 5xxx series
Windows 7 32 or 64 bit whichever you have

Download and install the driver.

Post back with the results but that should sort out your issues and give you GPU boost.

Thanks for your quick response.

That is exacxtly what I have already done. In fact I have done it twice, once allowing the Ati site to examine my system and give me the correct driver - the one you mention, and once by downloading the non Mobility one for the HD 5xxx series. Both installed OK, but neither has given me more than a 1600x1200 resolution option.

Would it be worth uninstalling the graphics card in Device Manager and installing the driver afresh, or even going back to the original (BootCamp 3.1) one? That's all I can think of at the moment, but I'm a little wary about uninstalling the card in case it somehow affects my Mac.

Have other people with a 27in iMac and the Radeon HD5750 been able to operate at max resolution (2560x1440) I wonder?

All suggestions gratefully received.

Tim

It's almost as if it thinks there isn't enough video memory to exceed the lower resolution.

I'd try and roll back to the original bootcamp driver (in fact you can get that from the ati site too).

Also worth re-install the whole bootcamp driver set from the disc created from the original bootcamp install

Thanks very much for taking the trouble to help out, and thanks too, by the way, for your welcome.

I'll give your suggestions a try and get back to you. Not sure how to find the orginal bootcamp driver on the ati site, but I'll give it a search.

I loaded the original bootcamp drivers from the OSX SL Install disk as detailed in the bootcamp instructions. Hopefully I'll find it in there.

Very glad you are there!

Tim

Hi, mrplow,

I've been at this all evening and thought I'd update you.

So far I've uninstalled all Ati software through Control Panel/Remove Programs which took me back to BootCamp 3.2 drivers. Then had an Apple Update to 3.3 suddenly came through. Ran it anyway just in case - no luck. Went back and reinstalled the original BootCamp 3.1 drivers from Mac OSX Install Disk - no luck.

The monitor, btw, is listed under W7 as Generic PnP Monitor or Generic Non PnP Monitor - no mention of Apple.

Tried to install the BootCamp display drivers, but I'm not sure what happened - it seemed to make no difference.

So I'm still at square one with a stretched 1600x1200 screen. Trying other resolutions was no help and gave an even worse appearance as you might expect.

Can I totally remove ati*.sys files from Windows by deleting them from the System 32/Drivers folder and trying "Uninstall" device driver in Device Manager? Obviously I'll then loose my display, but then install something fresh like the latest Radeon Mobility again and see what happens? Might that corrupt my Mac side?

Sorry to leave you with all these questions, but I really cannot use W7 under BootCamp for anything requiring screen precision at the moment.

Thanks again,

Tim

Hi,

Just in case anyone else is reading this with an interest in similar problems.

Having done just about everything to sort this out my final situation is that I now have a non stretched desktop running at 1600x1200. This results in about 30% of my lovely 27in iMac screen not being used, but at least I can use what I have which is about equivalent to a traditional 22in or 24in monitor.

In the end I reckoned that I needed the Catalyst Control Centre with its ability to rescale desktops and to correct aspect ratios for given resolutions, which is what I was looking for. I have ended up with using the latest Ati drivers for Mobility Radeon HD 5800, rather than the 5750 that Apple installed. This seemed to be the only way to get the latest Catalyst Control Centre for my machine.

I suspect that part of the problem is the monitor. No one seems to recognise the monitor properly in Windows and for a while I was running with the default Windows drivers for a VGA monitor and generic graphics card. Then I upgraded to the Radeon driver mentioned above. I also finally upgraded BootCamp to 3.3, which seemed to kick the driver into recognising 1600x1200 as maximum resolution. I had been running for a while on 1250x ? (can't remember exactly).

Although CCC recognises that the monitor's maximum resolution is actually 2560x1440 this isn't available in the properties selector.

It is hard to understand why Apple cannot include drivers for screen and graphics card in BootCamp that work correctly.

I can use Windows 7 for the few programs I need, but it is a shame about the other 30% of the screen that I have lost.

It is a minefield and has taken up hours of my time. Is anyone running BootCamp Win 7 on a 27in iMac without these problems I wonder?

Tim

I have the 27" iMac and have never had these issues under Windows 7 (64bit ultimate).

It's either failing hardware or a mess of ATI drivers.

You can use DriverSweeper (boot into windows safe mode with networking) to remove all ATI driver traces.

On mine the Screen Resolution Window shows the screen as:
Display: "1. Color LCD"
Resolution: "2560 x 1440(recommended)"
Orientation: "Landscape"

Advanced settings - monitor tab list it as a Generic pNp Monitor, 59 Hertz.

So no specific Apple screen driver installed or required.

Can you post a screen shot of the Adapter Tab from the advanced settings dialogue?

Mrplow, thank very much for persevering with me.

Now I know that if you don't have this problem then I shouldn't either. Did you really just do a simple BootCamp installation and everything worked? Perhaps I should do another fresh installation. What version of BootCamp did you start with?

I now know that there must be a solution. As far as I know I did a very straightforward BootCamp Win 7 Ult installation. Nothing seemed to go wrong at the time. I even did a remove BootCamp and started fresh. My iMac is only a year old so I hope I don't have hardware problems.

OK I will look into your suggestions and try the screen shot you propose although I haven't worked out yet how to do this in Windows. Do you mean the advanced settings in Device Manager, or CCC?

I'll get back to you. Thanks again for your help and patience.

Tim

I've always have Win 7 on this iMac. The 2009 had a black screen on install issue (search my posts for black screen and you'll find a link). But that issue was specific to the first 27" models I believe.

As soon as I got Windows running, and since, I've used the mobility drivers straight from ATI/AMD.

If you have a 'Windows' keyboard you can hold alt and press print screen to copy the current window to the clipboard. Then you can paste it into paint to save it out as a jpg etc.
If you don't have a Windows keyboard you may be able to use the Windows snipping tool or Google up a free screen shot app.

The screen shot I'm after is:
right-click on the desktop - Screen Resolution - Advanced Settings - adapter tab.

Thanks, Mrplow, I'll follow your guidance and get back to you when I've sorted the screen shot.

My present thoughts are perhaps to do a fresh clean install of Win 7, but not to install all the BootCamp drivers immediately. Rather see what the screen properties look like first, then maybe install everything one by one except the graphics card drivers which I'll get fresh from Ati. But first I'll give you the info you've asked for when I get the time.

Thanks again.

Tim

Hi, Mrplow,

Here is the screenshot (thanks for the ScreenHunter suggestion) you asked for



plus a couple of others that may (or may not) be useful.









The reason that it shows the graphics card as a Mobility HD 5800 instead of a 5750 is because that was the driver that downloaded under the HD 5*** on Ati's website.

I had read the correspondence about the black screen issue previously. All these issues are about drivers as we know, but it is how to get the right ones to work that seems to be the problem. Let me know what you think about my suggestion above about reinstalling.

I haven't tried the DriverSweeper program yet (there are some iffy reviews and also some seem to have problems getting hold of it,) but I'll at least download it if I can.

Looking forward to getting this sorted with you patient and invaluable help. The Forum is great!

Tim

OK, Mrplow,

I'm just taking a quiet sit down with a strong drink - I have a (the) solution.
These are my latest screenshots of the results:







What did I do? I unplugged the DVI - VGA adapter from my iMac which I have had in place, although not actually connected to my second monitor, which I ocasionally use on the Mac. Your earlier thought about the graphics adapter's memory may have filtered into my thinking. Why was 1600x1200 the maximum reolution available when 2560x1440 was reported by Catalyst as the native resoluion? This may be the answer and perhaps if I ran two monitors in Win 7 1600x1200 would be all that the card could manage. I also noticed that the Screen Resolution window showed two monitors even when only one was connected.

I shut down the iMac, unplugged the adapter and rebooted Windows into an immediately corrected desktop.

Why this made a difference when it wasn't connected I don't know. And I don't care! Thank you so much for your help, you enabled me to persevere until I found the result and no doubt learned a lot on the way. And doesn't Win 7 fly on this machine?!

Every good wish to you,

Tim

My god, thank you so much for this solution. I was tearing my hair out yesterday trying to get Windows 7 looking acceptable on my 27in iMac!

I have a Cinema Display added as a second monitor and although I managed to download and install drivers for this, it only made a marginal improvement to the iMac display.

As soon as I'm home I am gonna try and disconnect the additional monitor and see if native resolution is finally supported on the iMac.

What I'd really like to do is have the ability to run both so if anyone has a solution to run a 20in Cinema Display alongside a 27in iMac then I'd be grateful!

Thanks, and Merry Christmas!

Cheers

rich :Blushing:

Hi, Rich,

I haven't been back to this thread in a while and just found your post.

I hope that you have success. I would be interested to know if you managed to get your two monitors working correctly. Part of the journey I travelled (above) included connecting my second monitor and finding that it, an old IIyama 22" CRT monitor functioned correctly while the iMac didn't. You have seen my account of how things developed.

Let us know your results - it may help others with similar problems.

Happy Christmas,

Tim

TimB2 said:

Hi, Rich,

I haven't been back to this thread in a while and just found your post.

I hope that you have success. I would be interested to know if you managed to get your two monitors working correctly. Part of the journey I travelled (above) included connecting my second monitor and finding that it, an old IIyama 22" CRT monitor functioned correctly while the iMac didn't. You have seen my account of how things developed.

Let us know your results - it may help others with similar problems.

Happy Christmas,

Tim

Click to expand...

Hi Tim,

I have indeed got both working in full resolution. I chose extend desktop to get both monitors appear in a control panel and by a process of shuffling around I eventually got both in the right position relative to each other and both at maximum resolution.

It works very well!

Cheers

Rich

Hi, Rich,

Congratulations! Glad you found the solution. It really shouldn't be so hard to get these things sorted as it often proves to be, should it? One of the beauties for me was the intuitive "clean lines" of the Mac OS. So why mess it up with Windows, eh? But sometimes we just have to.

I have to say that seeing Win7 on my 27in iMac is quite something, but there are still niggles and I use Mac for everything but a couple of essential programs.

Good luck.

Tim

TimB2 said:

Hi, Rich,

Congratulations! Glad you found the solution. It really shouldn't be so hard to get these things sorted as it often proves to be, should it? One of the beauties for me was the intuitive "clean lines" of the Mac OS. So why mess it up with Windows, eh? But sometimes we just have to.

I have to say that seeing Win7 on my 27in iMac is quite something, but there are still niggles and I use Mac for everything but a couple of essential programs.

Good luck.

Tim

Click to expand...

Yeah me too. I only really installed to play a flying game! Far too difficult for me, I haven't even got to the battle yet! It's called Cliffs of Dover and the graphics are amazing!

Cheers

rich

After installing Windows 7 (64bit) you also need to install the WindowsSupport then restart, you will get the full resolution.