VIA Chrome9 HC P4M900 and screen rotation in XP

[ferrante]

Hi guys,

I have a laptop with VIA Chrome9 IGP P4M900
I would like to be able to do screen rotation - it Definitely makes a life MUCH easier for us when reading ebooks.

No success.So I need a second opinion here.Here are what I was able to dig;

-updated to the last win xp driver for Chrome9 HC IGP for P4M900 from viaarena

-someone dropped a hint that for Win XP its enought to "press CTRL+Left Arrow or CTRL+Right Arrow" in order to do this.

-Installed iRotate from Entech (the makers of "powerstrip" software) that should be able to perform it but no success.


Now the confusing part: -Linux- driver downloadable at the Viaarena is explicitly noted to -natively- support screen rotation, I wonder if there is,or will be available a driver for Windows XP to allow just that thing. IMHO its a must.


Best Regards

[ferrante]

Hi,

I am again here after a week.

If P4M900 graphic driver has no screen rotation, this is serious issue IMHO needs to be taken care of.

Any opinion or a solution from VIA tech staff would be nice.

[Mr. Chris]

Well aparently VIA does not see screen rotation as being important. I would not hold my breath hoping for a new driver to enable that function (unless you really like the color blue ).

There is no VIA Staff here, just us volunteer Forum Members. Sorry I can't offer any assistance. Chris.

[ferrante]

... as official VIAarena is still pointing questions here.How come they address hardcore issues like these?

Ok.
VIA Contact Support - VIA Technologies, Inc.

..as for drivers - Linux driver team was behaving more responsible as here they have the perfect screen rotate implementation.

weird.

Today I got freeze, which Microsoft error report service pinpointed also to video driver.Thats issue number two.

Anyway, I sent kind letter to one most-logically appearing address at viaarena, asking kindly the person reading that to forward it to gentlemen doing driver programming.

Not that I'm naive too much, its up to VIA if they care for usability of their product..

[ferrante]

Update:

after writing a letter to VIA, few days after I find new driver for s3 IGP for P4M900, CN896 etc. BRAVO VIA/S3!

I think it was "i" edition

afterwards..

I tried to turn on dual display on my Toshiba-manufactured motherboard,BIOS,Harddisk etc, and branded as Mitac 8615PID

Dual display worked about 15 minutes okay in dual independent mode, then started black-blanking and finally crashed with BSOD s3igp.sys.

Ok,rebooting Windows XP Pro..

CANNOT REBOOT,IT REBOOTS TO BSOD s3IGP.sys

<some disappointment occured>
going to safe mode, uninstalling s3 driver, installing a new one, "k" edition

Driver series "k" issued in november seems to be almost the worst.

why almost?

-well it (almost?? I cannot remember at least) never crashed

-Rotation is again broken and do not work. It offers some lame 180 degrees rotation and even that do not work (!)

-it has some problems with area overlaping, while moving windows and occasional screen blank lasting up to 15 seconds

+ side: it does not crash unrecoverably with BSOD relating to s3igp.sys which prevented WinXP to boot up like previous version.That happened exactly after..trying to use dual display feature. But I think screen rotation worked on that one.

Strange.I think some consistant quality control would be benefitial here.

[Mr. Chris]

We used to theorize that VIA has only one guy writing drivers, somewhere in a basement in an office building in Taiwan. He only works 10 days a month, and with the petition that the Linux community unleashed on VIA earlier this year, has no time for VIA's "older" stuff. Hell, he's still trying to get VIA's drivers for Vista written correctly!

You are aware that VIA intends on producing only their MATX "embedded" boards, they have completely dropped making any chipsets. They do make one S3 PCI-E video card but everything else is Epia.

I presume that "new" driver release was coincedental to your e-mail to them. Sorry if I seem dis-enchanted with VIA but, yes, they could and SHOULD do better in all areas that concern them. They could and should be a serious contender in the PC market place rather that just seeming to be content with a tiny portion.

O.K., rant over, that wasn't very much help, was it. Chris.