Remote resolution is 640 x 480 until I turn on my monitor

VGuitarist
VGuitarist Posts: 4
edited May 2023 in General questions

My Windows desktop has a LG 4K monitor and Radeon x570 graphics card. The latest drivers are installed for both devices. I have the latest build of TV 13 installed.

If I turn on my computer with the monitor off, the TV remote resolution is stuck at 640x480. There are no other resolutions offered. All I have to do is turn on my monitor and  the remote resolution instantly changes to 3840x2160 (what I want).. The behavior occurs with my Windows laptop, iPad and iPhone.

Any idea why this is happening and how to fix it?

Best Answer

Answers

  • Scotty
    Scotty Posts: 493 Staff member 🤠

    Hi VGuitarist,

    This occurs because this is the display your desktop puts out when it cannot detect the hardware/recommend resolution.

    It is actually very common for Radeon graphics cards to not put out a display at all if a monitor is not connected and then you would just get a black screen.

    Unfortunately there is no fix for this, you need to make sure the monitor is connected as while it is off, the system is essentially headless which we cannot support unfortunately.

    -Scotty

    Senior Moderator
    Did my reply answer your question? Why not accept it as a solution to help others?
  • VGuitarist
    VGuitarist Posts: 4

    @Scotty,

    Thank you for the reply. It just happened again; I forgot to turn on my monitor this morning and just drove 20 miles home.to fix it. Now back to work...

    While I have been a ATI/AMD fan for many years, I am not married to the rx570 video card. Is there another 4-8 GB high end video card I can use that doesn't have this problem?

  • VGuitarist
    VGuitarist Posts: 4

    Here's what AMD said about it.after trying to recreate the issue in their lab:

    Thank you for contacting AMD.

    Please be advised that unfortunately, TeamViewer is getting the resolution that the Windows OS on the PC is offering, and that usually depends on what Windows is able to gather regarding the monitor that is connected to the system, therefore, if the monitor is not being recognized when it is off, Windows won't be able to offer other resolutions to TeamViewer.

    You could alternatively try to install, if available, the drivers for the 4K Monitor, and then try to update it on the Device Manager so that it is recognized correctly by Windows, and not as a standard monitor. This way, it would be possible that Windows assumes the resolutions that the monitor is able to handle even if it is off, although, we cannot guarantee this.

    However, if the situation remains the same, you would have to keep the monitor on so that the OS recognizes the available resolutions for it.

    For further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

    Best regards,

    Joseph

    AMD Global Customer Care

  • Scotty
    Scotty Posts: 493 Staff member 🤠

    Hi VGuitarist,

    AMD are correct.

    And unfortunately, it's not really a GPU specific thing. In fact, it is normally more likely to be fixed by changing to a monitor than changing GPU.

    The long and short of it is that we do not support headless systems. If your monitor is off, your system is essentially headless.

    As AMD said, without a monitor attached, windows does not know what resolution to offer and we do not have the ability to force non-native resolutions. You need to find some way of forcing the OS to create the correct resolution.

    -Scotty

     

    Senior Moderator
    Did my reply answer your question? Why not accept it as a solution to help others?
  • SalKhan
    SalKhan Posts: 3

    This is definitely a software/driver based issue. Some update recently for me now cause the resolution to not only change, but reverse (eg: 1080x1920, 480x620 etc..) when my display (a TV in my case) was powered off. It almost looks formatted to fit on a mobile device?

    Regardless, I deleted the driver (uninstall software option checked) and let Win10 use a generic driver and the problem was solved for TeamViewer. Granted I can't scale it properly on the TV with the software, but my remote session are now in 1920x1080 regardless of display power state.

  • > The long and short of it is that we do not support headless systems. If your monitor is off, your system is essentially headless.

    How is this possible when it is not a problem for both RDP and **Third Party Product** (that is, a **very well known THIRD PARTY PRODUCT**)?

  • My solution has been to disable my graphics driver in device manager when I'm not on the system itself (ie: traveling and using my laptop or phone).

    However when I want to use that system again I have to connect remotely and re-enable the driver.
  • fod
    fod Posts: 1

    I agree.  Why is this not a problem with RDP?

  • gyap
    gyap Posts: 3

    The solution is that to connect a real monitor to the headless machine. Then the OS will see it. Then in the device manager you have to update the basic monitor (not the display adapter!) driver, just takes a minute. After that everythink will work. At least in my case. 

    What I did more is to bring all windows 10 machine to the latest windows 10 version actually to 1903. It can be important too, because of there were windows update issues with the RDP (Remote Desktop). 

    The other solution could be what other supposed here, to use a dummy, headless ghost display connector (very cheap).

    As I understand this failure regarding to usually AMD video cards, because of if there isn't a real monitor connected, then it sends somewhow just the basic, lowest resolution display, what will be later captured by Teamviewer or other remote desktops solutions. In our case the video card was a AMD FirePro.

  • GM539
    GM539 Posts: 1

    Not an AMD specific issue, but what I noticed is that nvidia cards don't have this problem. I purchased 5 computers and connected them to network for remote configuration. 4 have AMD RP WX4100s and one has a quadro P1000. The quadro allows me to go up to 4K remotely with no monitor attached, and both cards have only 4 mini DP ports on them.

  • bmote
    bmote Posts: 2

    @Porzingasm wrote:

    There are also options for "headless hdmi adapters" which can be plugged in and serve up to a 1080p "output".

     

    **Information removed as per Community Guidelines**


    Genius.

  • bmote
    bmote Posts: 2

    I don't use my remote system for anything other than mocked endpoints and proxying network traffic for development.  Without the need for any robust video solution I was able to simply disable the AMD Radeon RX video card in my device and let the default Windows adapter handle the video.  2 benefits: 1) the resolution now defaults to 1024x768 and 2) there is no hardware acceleration so I'm not constantly presented with a black screen and having to hit refresh and/or (un)remove wallpaper in order to get the screen to stay up to date.

    That said, I'm still buying a headless HDMI adapter mentioned here.  I had no idea such a thing existed.  Thank you.

  • I bet it's the monitor and they way it implements hot plug detect/EDID. Not the GPU. I'm sure the people at AMD used a different monitor. Some don't even need power to the display for EDID to work.

  • Iconoclast
    Iconoclast Posts: 3 ✭✭

    I just wanted to post here for anyone who might need a real solution to this problem. I run a headless Windows 10 server that has an NVIDIA Geforce 1050 Ti on my home network, so it's not only an AMD problem, and it's not only a display port problem because my system doesn't even have any. The other posts give helpful information, but no solutions without having to buy a dummy display emulator. There are software virtual monitor emulators which I don't think were even mentioned, and some of them do not offer high resolutions, so they are not all created equal.

    There is free software called Amyuni USB Mobile Monitor that I found that took seconds to enable, then change the resolution in Windows Display settings, and the Teamviewer problem of showing 640 x 480 resolution was fixed. The post by the author of the software is here and has instructions and explains everything and has the link to download.

    It is so simple, fast, free, and it works! I hope this helps someone else not have to do the hours of research that I had to do.

    -Iconoclast

    P.S. I'm sorry for the necro post, but I am just trying to save someone else a lot of time by giving a real solution that is free.

  • DSantana
    DSantana Posts: 1

    I had the same problem, and this worked for me:

    right button in the desktop -> display settings -> advanced display settings -> Display adapter properties for Display 1 -> List All Modes -> Select the resolution you want -> OK -> Apply

    Not sure if it works for both, DP and HDMI connections.

    Could anybody confirm it is also working for you?

  • KaiserT
    KaiserT Posts: 1

    You are an absolute legend! Thank you so much for your post! I'm stuck half way around the world trying to access my PC and its unusable at 640 x 480.

  • erk_speed
    erk_speed Posts: 1

    Perfect, so easy and worked great! I could even install it in the 640x480 remote "window" :)

    Thanks!