Screen is "shifted" after monitor shut down

English Hardware
#1

When my monitor has been shut down by the pc (either through Kpowersave or the KDE power option settings), the screen has “shifted” about halfway to the left. In other words, my entire screen has moved to the left so that only the right half is visible on the left half of my monitor. The right half of my monitor then displays the right-most 20-or-so pixels repeated to infinity. Otherwise it works normally and I can even end the session and it “shifts” back in to normal at the login screen. If I turn of the monitor with the monitor power button, this doesn’t happen.

Any ideas? I’ve searched this forum and it sounds unique (unfortunately).

System is 11.1 with AMD Athlon X2 with Nvidia Geforce 6500 video card running the G02 driver from the nvidia repository. 3d is enabled. The monitor is a widescreen LCD ACER running at 1650x1080.

I didn’t have this problem with 11.0.

#2

Sounds like the refresh changed. If you have a monitor driver CD, you might try running sax2 and go to Monitor / Utility Disc and inserting the monitor disc and then choosing your specific model from the list.

#3

Thanks, I’ll give it a try when I get home. 11.1 actually found the correct monitor model when I installed, so I didn’t think to use the one on the disk.

#4

O.K., finally got sax to see the utility disk and chosen my monitor (ACER X223W).

Unfortunately, the problem persists. I don’t know if it’s related, but ever since I moved to 11.1, the screen goes black for about 1.5 seconds when certain display settings are altered. For instance:

-when the screensaver starts/stops
-when I change window managers
-even when I select a different screensaver in the list (not actually testing it fullscreen, just when I click it in the list to preview it in that tiny window

I’m thinking maybe the Nvidia drivers are a little screwey in 11.1 still. Do you think it could be related to my “screen shifting” problem? I didn’t have any of these issues in 11.0 with all the same hardware.

Thanks again.

#5

I have found that screen shifting problems are pretty much always caused by incorrect refresh rates. Have you checked the refresh rate before and after the shift?

Also, if you turn your monitor off and then on when the screen is shifted, does this fix the problem?

It could very well be a driver bug, but all I can say is that it’s not happening to me and I’m using the Nvidia driver with 11.1.

#6

Yes, the refresh is correct both before and after the “shift” (60hz).

Turning the monitor off and on again does not fix the problem, but restarting X or ending the current session does.

Thanks again!

#7

You are the man Foresthill. I found the setting under the NVIDIA X-server settings for refresh rate was set to “Auto”. I locked it at 60hz, and now all appears to be well.

Thanks again for your advice and patience. You are a credit to the SUSE community.

#8

For anyone who is looking to solve this problem, I can confirm a simple solution that works – and credit to the folks above for tipping me off. Installing OS 12.1 on an IBM ThinkCenter desktop (3 GB RAM), I got the “half screen problem”, which was really the screen was shifted half way to the left, which basically left the system unusable. This did not happen during the initial install boot from CD, but appeared after the install started, as well as eventual (but tricky due to navigational problems) boot from disk.

Solution? Using the physical screen controls on the NEC MultiSync 1740CX, select the self-configuration button. The problem is fixed, and permanently it seems. Didn’t even need to adjust any driver (which would have been sort of difficult to get to). I hope this helps anyone searching for this solution.

SUMMARY → TRY YOUR PHYSICAL SCREEN MENU CONTROLS FOR SELF-CONFIGURATION.