Very weird and coincidental "Sync. out of Range" issues...

[jRnn]

I know a lot of people experience the ever so annoying "Sync. out of Range"-problems, often because the signal from the video card exceeds the max. resolution/frequency their monitor can handle. I believe the cause of these problems with my monitor are of some other reason, which I haven't been able to figure out.

I have Samsung SyncMaster 753s & NVidia GeForce2 MX. Everything worked 100% fine with 1024 x 768 (32bit)(85Hz), until I got this kinda retro-itch and installed the good old Grand Theft Auto (1997 version). The install program started to copy DirectX 3.0 without even inquiring me whether to do it or not. I thought "I don't want this old piecashit, I have 9.0 for f**k's sake!" so I clicked CANCEL. There you go, the install program wants me to restart (as usual). After restarting, I began playing the game, just to notice that it worked at 10x speed... So I uninstalled the whole thing.

After that, I launched MOHAA, and changed the ingame resolution from 1024 x 768 x 32 to 1024 x 768 x 16. The screen goes wiggly, after that I get the "Sync. out of Range" the first time. I had to reset -- just to see the "Sync. out of Range" message floating before my eyes, after the Win ME splash screen. I had to run safe mode, and change the display resolution from 1024 x 768 x 32 to 1024 x 768 x 16. That solved the problem (for a while!)

Then, I played Ghost Recon. After quitting the game the same problem comes up... I had to run safe mode, and changing the resolution no longer did any good. I reinstalled DirectX 9.0, reinstalled my Display driver(s), installed the latest drivers for my video card. I was able to run 1024 x 768 x 32 again. But the problem shows up everytime I play some specific games or change the resolution of any game. I have checked that the monitor is properly connected, I have tried the "Self-test feature check" to see that my display is working correctly.

Sometimes when I quit a game (Pharaoh, for example), I get the "Sync. out of Range"-message at Windows, but it goes away by simply shutting the comp down. Also, when testing Direct3D and DirectDraw with DxDiag, the problem shows up. DxDiag claims that there are no problems with any of my hardware, neither does MSInfo.

So, my display is now set to 1024 x 768 (16bit)(85Hz), and I'm afraid to play just about anything cause it might freak out the monitor!

I'm completely clueless, I'm not sure if it's installing GTA that caused the problem, but I can't come up with anything else. Any advice would be appreciated. Besides my comp is going worse day by day, the overall performance is lousy, running Scandisk, System DeFrag etc. is no help... Actually I would be willing to format all my HDs and start all over again, like "back to square one", but I'm such a newb with any technical devices that I don't dare to do it (I might do it all wrong and ruin everything)

Sorry for the _long_ message, I'm just too confused with all these issues. Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

[Beemer]

Welcome to Techimo.
We need the O/S.

Cheers!

[jRnn]

Hmm... didn't I mention? How thoughtless of me...
Windows ME it is, and I'm not sure if it's called "safe mode" in this case, I used the floppy disk start... erm... thingy

Sorry for all the newbishm

[DanU]

Have you tried locking your refresh rate for DX games?

Go to Start > Run > type "dxdiag" and hit enter. Click on "More Help" then "Override". Select "Override Value", enter a reasonable refresh rate (say 75Hz) and click "OK". Now try your games and see if you still get an out-of-sync error.

[jRnn]

I tried that, but it didn't help (thanks anyway)

Maybe this clarifies something: the problem seems to occur in such situations as quitting to windows from a 640x480 fullscreen program. I even get it when running the DirectDraw test with dxdiag (after the fullscreen bouncing white box)