I have a Gateway FPD1975W LCD monitor with an unusual 1440×900 resolution. Intel video cards have no issues with this resolution, but Nvidia cards don’t support it by default when running under Windows.
Hack the drivers a bit and you can get this monitor to work just fine with an Nvidia adapter, though. Believe it or not, the only hacking tool you need to accomplish the deed is notepad.exe. The trick is to download the latest Nvidia WHQL driver that supports your card, but don’t install it just yet. Extract the driver with an archiving utility like 7-Zip, then open the file modes.txt in a text editor, scroll past the list of video cards it supports (which can be extensive), and you’ll find a list of video modes. Copy the 1600×900 line, paste it in again, then change the portion that reads “1600 x 900” to read “1440 x 900.” Keep scrolling, entering a corresponding 1440×900 instance directly above every occurrence of 1600×900.
Save the hacked modes.txt file–I love the word “hacked” because it makes people nervous–and then you can install your hacked video driver by running setup.exe. After the installation finishes and you reboot, you can enjoy your monitor and its nice 16:10 aspect ratio at its native resolution.
Just remember the next time you upgrade your driver, you’ll have to hack that one too. 16:10 monitors are hard to come by these days though, so it’s worth the effort.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
Now if you can show us how to hack,/b> the .INF file so it loads only the driver and not all that other crap…