Samsung 204B LCD screen blackout

After re-installing SP3 on my XP box while trying to figure out a software issue I found that I lost my previously set NVIDIA timings which were set to stop the monitor's random screen blackout's. So rather than dredge through the forum's again next time, let's face it there will be a next time with MS, I thought I'd note down how to do this for future posterity and my sanity.

Problem

The screen blackout issue with my Samsung SyncMaster 204B occurs when using the DVI input on the monitor. The screen will blackout at random times and then flick back on, this does not occur when using the analogue input into the monitor. This issue only happen's on some Samsung 204B monitor's.

Solution

Open the NVIDIA control panel, select Display, then under the Appearance menus select "Manage Custom timings". Select the Create button, select the Advance button on the "Custom Timings" dialog and set the timing standards to "CVT reduced blank".

Filed under: Windows  Tags: Hardware, Xp

4 Responses to “Samsung 204B LCD screen blackout”

I did this several years ago to stop the DVI blackouts, and it worked fine. Today I had to replace a failed video card and this time the blackouts occurred on the Samsung 204B LCD attached via VGA rather than DVI, which is pretty weird. But when I went to the NVIDIA control panel I couldn't find Display > Appearance > "Manage custom timings" so it seems NVIDIA updated the control panel sometime since then. After some puddling around, I discovered how I now had to do it: it was now under "Manage custom resolutions" followed rather than "Manage custom timings"). I clicked Create [a new custom resolution] button, then clicked the "Advanced >>" button, and there it was under "Back-end parameters" -- there's a "Timing Standard" drop-down list for selecting the "CVT reduced blank" mode. They must have been tutored by Microsoft in how to rearrange and add extra steps to a process! I have my fingers crossed and hope that it will get rid of the annoying blackouts. I'll make another comment after a day or two if this hasn't resolved my problem.

Well, this time setting "CVT reduced blank" did not seem to eliminate the annoying blackouts for me. Consequently I did some more exploration of the NVIDIA Control Panel options under "Manage custom resolutions" keeping in mind posts elsewhere relating to Samsung 204B blackouts, such as http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=721013 which suggests dropping the refresh rate slightly below 60 Hz. I edited the profile set up yesterday for "CVT reduced blank" and changed the timing standard drop-down option to "Manual" and this in turn unlocked the "Desired refresh rate" filed which I decreased from 60.000 to 59.900 Hz. For the ensuing 24 hours or more, there have been no blackouts, so it seems that this might be the solution.

Thanks for the update Tony, with any luck others will make use of your solution as well.

I had the same problem on my syncmaster 226bw and Geforce GTX260. Setting a custom to 59Hz and "CVT reduced blank" looks to have resolved issue.

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