TV won't display PC output

[Mad Gear]

Right, my mate finally set my new PC up over his place (which was a nightmare).
It finally got sorted and i eagerly set it up at my place. Only problem is that the TV/monitor comes up as "Not supported mode" when the PC boots up. I know it's because the PC set itself to my mates monitor and i'm trying to boot it up on my Widescreen TV/monitor (which i've been using for my old PC).
I need to change the resolution settings but i can't (i've tried tapping F8 as it boots but no joy).
Any ideas as it's doing my heed in. It's a Dell inspirion 530 BTW.

[huxley]

You didnt point out what type of connection you`re hooked up via, vga, dvi to hdmi? And the brand of tv would be handy as well.

Do you get the bios post info or does it just go straight to unsupported on the screen?

[Mad Gear]

The Telly is a 26" Samsung (not sure what model) it does 1080i. It's going through VGA.

I get the startup bit where it says F2/F10 but when it goes to the logon screen it goes blank.

[huxley]

OK I have a 26" sammy as well and had the same problem via vga, how I got around it was to connect the pc upto another pc monitor and set the gfx card to the correct res for my tv which i think for my tv was 1280 x 720. Which looked awfull on the pc monitor.
Next I connected it back up to the TV and hey presto! it appears, although it had overscan problems which I corrected via the control panel for my gfx card (nvidea in my case).
That was ages ago and have updated the card to an 8600 one which gives a nice image for dvds bluray etc via a dvi - hdmi lead.
Hope this is of some help to you.

[tom-nook]

That sounds very similar to my old Sammy lcd. Very few resolution supported and I got that message a couple of times with resolutions the manual suggested were supported.

Not sure if it helps but this page seems to suggest you can boot the pc using low resolution mode (guessing you have Vista) and change the resolution that way......assuming you get a picture of course!!

http://erms.samsungusa.com/customer/sea/jsp/faqs/faqs_view.jsp?PG_ID=1&AT_ID=12551&PROD_SUB_ID=28&PROD_ID=133

(see the bit about 'if you still don't get no image' near the bottom)

My 530 has a dvi out but came with a video card pre-installed. Do you have dvi on your pc or just vga?

[squishyfishy]

yeah, unsupported resolution. Set it to 1360 x 768.

problemo solved.