New monitor looks fuzzy, does PC know it's widescreen?

Herbyme

Hi,
Just bought an ASUS VW266H 26 inch widescreen monitor, think it looks good but type not very sharp and images are widened - does my PC know it's a widescreen? The software that came with it installs ok but then shuts down with an error message every time I try to run it. Have uninstalled and reinstalled it. Cant see any obvious help on asus site and no instructions of any use. What do I need to do to improve things?
Many thanks in advance,

rdpro

the screen should have a 'Native Resolution' (like 1920x1200 or similar) at which the pixels match the video input to create a sharp image.

Set your desktop display properties to this resolution.

If your screen goes blank for 15sec after applying the changes, your graphics card/chip may not support a resolution that high.




This is in Windows XP

Herbyme

:T wow, thanks a million rdpro! That's absolutely briliant!

rdpro

welcome

btw, lcd's normally have a refresh rate of 60Hz (click the Advanced tab to check)

Herbyme

Sorry rdpro, I don't know what that means or what I should do about it! Duh. Please explain! btw my kids were very impressed! I did explain how I knew what to do!

rdpro

refresh rate is how often/fast the screen updates the picture it's displaying (to put it simply anyhoo) - older CRT tube monitors used this more than LCDs.

Ever seen a pc monitor on a TV program when it flickers and appears to 'roll'? that's the refresh happening, mixed with the low frames-per-second of the TV stream (as opposed to real life eyes recording to your brain) - a wrong refresh rate can give very bad headaches.

Herbyme

I see. So should I set it somewhere? In display settings?

rdpro

Yup, click the Advanced button as shown in the pic above (if you have XP, that is) - I should imagine it's already set to 60Hz though, unless you previously had an old CRT monitor attached

Herbyme

Got it! Yes, already at 60, but thank you very much. Old monitor not quite CRT but boy is the new one an improvement - especially now the resolution is set right!

spud17

Many modern LCD monitors seem to have an 'Auto' button somewhere below the screen, I've found them to be pretty good at getting a satisfactory picture.

Also I've never needed to run any software to install a monitor, the disc that came with my present monitor is still sealed and will probably stay that way.

prowla

Some monitors have "driver" disks, that at least make it so that the computer can recognize the model and populate the list of known resolutions for the given display correctly.
That said, I didn't need to do it with Windows 7, so my model must be known to the OS or my Intel graphics driver.