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I use 2 external monitors at work and 2 external monitors at home connected to my laptop (one with HDMI, one with VGA).

I never have any issues with this at my work setup, but at home, for some reason every couple of hours the monitors flash and refresh. It unmaximizes any windows and takes a few seconds before I can use it again. It's not a major issue because I am able to continue working, but it is an annoyance nonetheless.

I've got a Dell Studio XPS 16 running Windows 7 with 6 gigs of memory, an i7, and a 1GB AMD video card.

My gut is that it's the graphics driver, but it's strange that I only have the issue with this setup. Maybe it's because my home office has two different monitors where the one at work has 2 identical monitors?

Some information from the event logs:

iDEMDeviceCommonSettings.GetDeviceHDTVForceModeInfo failed with status -1 Error Called by: ATI.ACE.CLI.Aspect.DeviceCRT.Graphics.Runtime.RT_DeviceCRT::PrivateRefresh processID:03932 threadID:( ) domainName:(CCC.exe ) assemblyName:(CLI.Aspect.DeviceCRT.Graphics.Runtime, Version=3.5.4226.30387, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)

iDEMDriverSettings.GetCRTDisplayInfo failed with status -1 Error Called by: ATI.ACE.CLI.Aspect.DeviceCRT.Graphics.Runtime.RT_DeviceCRT::PrivateRefresh processID:03932 threadID:( ) domainName:(CCC.exe ) assemblyName:(CLI.Aspect.DeviceCRT.Graphics.Runtime, Version=3.5.4226.30387, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)

Unable to obtain Color Correction information, dem status: -2 Error Called by: ATI.ACE.CLI.Aspect.DeviceDFP.Graphics.Runtime.RT_DeviceDFP::Parse processID:03932 threadID:( ) domainName:(CCC.exe ) assemblyName:(CLI.Aspect.DeviceDFP.Graphics.Runtime, Version=3.5.4226.30386, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)

Exception : Access to the path 'C:\ProgramData\ATI\ACE\Profiles.xml' is denied. Exception Called by: ATI.ACE.APM.Server.XmlDocumentSaver::SaverWorker processID:03932 threadID:( ) domainName:(CCC.exe ) assemblyName:(APM.Server, Version=3.5.4226.30365, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846762e)

_iDEMDeviceCommon2Settings2 equals NULL Error Called by: System.RuntimeMethodHandle::_InvokeMethodFast processID:03932 threadID:( ) domainName:(CCC.exe ) assemblyName:(mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089)

There are about 50 messages each time this happens. The ones I've pasted here seem to cover a good variety of them.

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For what it's worth, I did already update the driver (actually not sure if it updated as it just re-installed everything, so I'm not sure it was actually newer). I'll have to see if it continues to happen. – dtbarne Feb 25 '12 at 0:21
The first sentence about work and home monitor use isn't clear about the machine powering them. Do you use the same laptop in both places (maybe with a docking station)? If not, what's the connection of the work environment? (different machine, same video driver)? – jdh Feb 25 '12 at 0:32
1  
Yes, I use the same laptop in both places. Wouldn't be a relevant statement otherwise. :) – dtbarne Feb 25 '12 at 0:49
Ok good, that wasn't clear. So what's different about the two environments? As @Sinmon Sheean points out, the error msgs look like its a driver problem. But if its the same drivers, why do they fail with different monitors? Are you suspending the laptop between the sites, so when it wakes up, there is some sw confusion about monitors? What are the monitor resolutions? Are the monitors listed accurately (in each environment) under the device mgr, or are they listed as generic monitors? In the err log, the profiles.xml is denied. Are you using the same login? – jdh Feb 25 '12 at 1:59

2 Answers

up vote 0 down vote accepted

Seeing the CCC.exe failures in there is a pretty good indicator that yes, drivers are at fault here. Your best bet is to try updating your drivers, but there isn't a whole ton more you can really do with it. You may want to poke around in the Catalyst settings, and see if there's anything in there that has to do with "Refreshing". But from this view here, and the errors you posted, it seems fairly clear that this is the drivers crashing and erroring.

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up vote 0 down vote

Drivers is a good place to start chances are Dell won't have a different version so suspecting there 'may' be an issue with it go to the GPU's site and see what is the current version for your graphics card and download that one.

Also it maybe beneficial to create profiles with specific settings and save those and use them at each location or as needed; this is available with nVidea cards/drivers I'm sure AMD will support also

Third...... get rid of that AMD and get a real graphic card lol; ok jk if these sugestions don't work we'll need more info incl. brand of monitors; resolution; differences like some mentioned above is your laptop open or closed lid while using are you waking it up or screen saver or opening programs with different screen resolutions; docking station; old monitors new monitors; clone view or independant; did you enable allow different resolutions; are they the same resolutions or all different?

Get the idea? ok hope that helps goodluck

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