No display, no software, no idea!

[jasonwilczak]

Hello,

Just got the uga usb 2.0 display adapter for xmas, was super excited to add a second display at work! Got to work today, plugged it in, install...waiting...install success!

Restarted, as instructed, got the "incompatability" balloon. Realized the work pc was using standard vga driver, so after some research, I found the actual ati driver. Download, install, success!

Re-installed the uga drivers, just to be safe, plugged in the monitor after install...nothing. I noticed that I didn't have the DisplayLink software, just the Win 7 (x64) basic control panel business, so I threw the cd in the drive to see if i can get the gui...nothing, the cd won't work, the setup.exe won't run... ::tear::

**EDIT** I found that the actual displayLink software IS installed, it just won't open/run...

After scouring the internet, I can't figure out what much to do, I'm currently installing the ATI control center to see if that works, but we shall see...

**EDIT** It appears that my graphics adapter is for windows server 2008 x64. There doesn't appear to be any graphics adapter driver for Windows 7 x64 specifically. However, after running the Win 7 Upgrade Advisor (even though i already have win7 running), the hardware (ATI ES1000) IS compatible with windows 7.

I attached an image of my graphics adapter from GPU-Z. Any help is greatly appreciated, I'm a programmer and dying at work without a second screen!

**EDIT** I attached the .zip file output from the displayLink support tool

**ADD** It appears that, from searching Plugable.com (the retailer), that this product won't work with the Dell PowerEdge SC440 (my machine) because of not being able to work with Windows Server SKUs. However, I am running Windows 7 enterprise N, I can't see how this should pose an issue, but thought I would update my post.

[jasonwilczak]

Hi all, this is the response I received from Plugable.com, the retailer,
looks like I will have to return the product and am out of luck :/

The best solution from the company
Bernie Thompson, Official Rep, replied 10 hours ago
Hi Jason,

Thanks for posting - I'm very sorry, I'm afraid I won't have good news for you.

DisplayLink-based products require a WDDM-compatible GPU to install on Vista and Windows 7 (WDDM is the native graphics driver model of Vista and Windows 7). This is because the DisplayLink driver depends on using the main GPU for rendering and OS integration in Vista and Win7, and does that through WDDM.

This isn't a problem in and of itself for recent graphics cards (nearly all shipped since Windows Vista).

Unfortunately, the Dell PowerEdge SC440 is from before this era - it was originally shipped with Windows Server 2003 installed. Unfortunately as is common for server systems, the system had a low-end GPU for the time (I think the SC440 first shipped in 2004) -- the ATI ES1000 as you mentioned.

The ATI ES1000 does not have a WDDM compatible driver, and it's clear from discussions elsewhere is too old to have one developed at this point. While you can get the graphics running on Vista and XP, it appears to be running the older XP driver model, which will have a bunch of limitations, including no DisplayLink support. It will also be quite slow, which might make driving the extra screens undesirable also.

And unfortunately, Dell apparently actively limited this system to prevent people from using the server as a client PC -- they limited the PCIe add in slots to 1x speed (see http://en.community.dell.com/support-..., so it looks like it's possible but tricky to find a more modern video card to upgrade to. Almost certainly not worth the trouble on this system.

I'm sorry to have to deliver the bad news that we can't help upgrade this system. We don't ever want customers to be stuck with hardware that doesn't work for them -- please make use of our no hassle 30 day returns on your UGA-2K-A unit. Just visit http://www.amazon.com/gp/css/returns/... to trigger the process. Just let us know if you have any trouble.

Thanks again for going out of your way to contact us to figure out the story.

Best wishes,
Bernie

The company says this solves the problem

[Pawel]

Hi Jason,

I was just reading your post and analysing the log files and spotted your update. Everything has been said by Bernie, please return the product to the manufacturer.

Regards

[jasonwilczak]

Thanks for looking into it also. It does make me sad, I was so looking forward to having another screen, but at least I have resolution!