Help us to help you

The first obstacle in dealing with support problems is a lack of information. To assist the support staff in solving any problems you may have encountered quickly and effectively, it is imperative that the information you provide contains as much detail as possible.

The Support Team have a vast amount of experience and you should feel free to contact them with any problems you may have. Tell them what you are trying to accomplish and they will advise you on the most suitable way to achieve your aims.

To contact them with " The system does not work" can cause hours, if not days of unnecessary fault finding. When contacting the support staff it would be extremely useful if you could provide the following details:

· The System you are using (motherboard, RAM, DataSoft Hardware and software, operating system and the   DataSoft driver in use).

· Application software and version.

· Number of screens in use.

· Full details of any displayed error messages.

· Details of what you were trying to achieve when the error occurred.

· Details of what exactly happened.

Any fault you may encounter will, in all likelihood, not have been experienced by our support staff, therefore to assist them in solving your problem, as much information as possible should be provided.

This section includes some of the more common technical support enquiries which are solved quickly and easily with simple user intervention. If in the unlikely event that you have a problem which is not listed or solved here, please complete the Problem Report Form at the bottom of this page, ensuring that all fields are completed as fully as possible.

• General Support Questions

• Troubleshooting - Horizon

• Troubleshooting - Vision RGB

• Problem Report Form

How To Carry Out Certain Procedures

During the support process you may be asked by one of our support staff to carry out certain tasks and procedures to assist them in solving your problems. Listed below are some of the tasks you may be requested to carry out. Click on the specific link for detailed instructions.

• How to print out System Information Windows 2000 (not system summary).

• How to print out System Information Windows XP.

• How to create an MS-DOS startup disk (boot floppy) for Windows XP.

• How to run PCICFG.

• How to Disable the Automatic Reboot Option.

• How to run DUMPEDID.

• How to Screen Grab.

Q: What Do Drivers Do and How Do They Improve my System Performance?

Drivers are essential to the correct operation of any graphics card. They communicate between the graphics hardware and the operating system to ensure that all graphics functions are accelerated to provide the optimum performance. Drivers are optimised for each graphics chip and for each version of Windows. For example, while visually Windows®95 and Windows®NT 4 appear to look the same, they are in fact very different, and the DataSoft Horizon drivers for these OS are quite different, since the hardware/software interaction is different. Please make sure that you have selected and installed the correct driver for the correct hardware / Windows® combination.

Note: We always recommend that you run the latest possible driver software. Because this may not be the software supplied on the DataSoft CD shipped with your product, please check the Download Drivers page for the latest version/release date.

Q: What Do Drivers Do and How Do They Improve my System Performance?

Drivers are essential to the correct operation of any graphics card. They communicate between the graphics hardware and the operating system to ensure that all graphics functions are accelerated to provide the optimum performance. Drivers are optimised for each graphics chip and for each version of Windows. For example, while visually Windows®95 and Windows®NT 4 appear to look the same, they are in fact very different, and the DataSoft Horizon drivers for these OS are quite different, since the hardware/software interaction is different. Please make sure that you have selected and installed the correct driver for the correct hardware / Windows® combination.

Note: We always recommend that you run the latest possible driver software. Because this may not be the software supplied on the DataSoft CD shipped with your product, please check the Download Drivers page for the latest version/release date.

Q: I have downloaded the driver I need - how do I install?

• Select the appropriate hardware / Windows®combination from the Download Drivers section and save it to your hard disk. All DataSoft drivers are stored as ZIP files (compressed to one file).
• Double click the filename and at the prompt select the directory name for saving the file.
• Once you have saved the file, unpack it into a new directory and then locate and run the Setup.exe, follow the Wizard installation instructions as prompted.

Q: There is no VGA text display at bootup:

• Make sure that the Horizon is firmly plugged in to a 32-bit PCI slot.
• Check that the video cable is connected at both ends - to the special connector on the card back panel and to each monitor cable.
• Ensure that you have monitors connected to all the outputs of the Horizon card. Due to the ordering of devices on the PCI bus, the system may boot up on either the first or last output.
• If the Horizon replaces a monochrome card, rather than another VGA card (e.g. dual screen MicroStation) you may need to configure DIP switches / jumpers on the PC motherboard. We suggest you refer to your PC documentation.
• Check that your motherboard BIOS is PCI 2.1 compatible. If not then you will need to upgrade the BIOS and try again, This is particularly important for Horizon installations, since it has a PCI to PCI bridge chip.
• Under Windows® 2000, if your system has onboard AGP/VGA then connect a monitor to the onboard VGA to view the system messages. Continue the installation using this VGA and you can switch the cable to a Horizon output later.
• The Horizon boots with a welcome message, and the initial stages of system BIOS proceed normally, with the results displayed on the screen. If there are subsequent display problems in the latter stages of this power-on self test routine, the BIOS may have initialised the PC to a non-standard bus status. Reboot and go into CMOS setup to examine the setup options. Consult your PC documentation for more information.

Q: Machine boots but slave monitors do not initialise:

The blue boot screen appears, but there is no cursor on the slave screens:

• Ensure that you are using at least Service Pack 3 of Windows®NT 4, since the Horizon has a PCI to PCI bridge, which was not supported in earlier versions of Windows®NT 4.
• Make sure that you have installed the software drivers and completed a full system reboot as described in the software of the Horizon on-line help.

Q: Windows does not boot correctly in non-VGA mode:

• Make sure you have installed the correct driver.
• If that does not solve the problem try moving the Horizon to a different PCI slot and try again.
• If you still have problems, then click on the following option: Start | Programs | Administrative Tools | Event Viewer. If there are any problems with graphics devices then click the following: Start | Settings | Control Panel and select Devices. Ensure the Startup setting for the Horizon, VGA Save and VGA Start is set to system and set to Disabled for all other graphics devices. Shutdown, power off and reboot.

Q: The machine boots up but does not appear across all screens:

• Ensure that you have installed the correct driver software for your card / operating system.
• Click the desktop Properties and select the TWIN page.
• Make sure that the correct number of screens is selected and restart the system.

Q: I have problems with multiple Horizon cards in a system:

The PC does not boot:

• If your PC fails to boot with two graphics cards installed, then you should first ensure that the motherboard BIOS is up to date – you can verify this with your PC supplier. If you have the latest BIOS but still experience problems, remove the VGA BIOS chip from the slave Horizon which should not affect slave mode operation.

The PC boots, but dual screen operation fails:

• If the PC does boot correctly, but dual screen operation fails, then you should run the PCICFG utility supplied in the utils/pci directory of the CD. This details how the PCI cards in the machine are mapped in by the motherboard BIOS, and will, therefore help us to examine and solve the problem. Run the utility and print out the results.

To do this:

• Change directory to \utils\pci
• Type pcicfg -v * > output.txt
• Print the file (output.txt) from DOS or by using Notepad
• Fax this print out and complete description of the problem and the system you are using (including version numbers of software installed)

Q: I have poor screen display/fuzzy images

• A poor screen image can be caused by selection of the incorrect refresh rate for your monitor. Using the TWIN Properties Sheet, select a lower refresh rate or lower resolution to see if this improves the crispness of the displayed image.

Caution: You can damage your monitor by setting the refresh to a rate beyond its capabilities. We recommend that you consult your monitor documentation before altering the refresh rate.

Q: Why does my computer beep during boot up or initialisation?

• The Horizon BIOS is DDC2 compliant and detects if a monitor is connected, the machine will beep where there is no monitor connection made. We recommend that monitors are always connected to all Horizon cards/channels before switching the computer on.

Q: Why do my captured images sometimes have black stripes across them?

This is normally accompanied by 'tearing'. To resolve this problem, try the following:

• Upgrade to the latest driver (from the Download page) - this contains a major fix to reduce noise picked up from the PCI bus.
• Change the synchronisation edge on the Sync Tab in the Input Properties box from 'trailing' to 'leading' or vice-versa.
• Ensure that the cable connecting the source PC and capture PC does not have ferrites fitted to it, as these limit the slew-rate of the sync signals.
• Ensure that the image is correctly aligned within the sample window. If it is too far off, then correct detection of the sync signals can cause problems.
• Reduce the refresh rate of the source PC, and increase the sample rate of the capture PC to compensate.

Q: My captured image is black, but the capture indicator is scrolling:

• This is usually caused by an incorrect Black Level Sampling point. It can be fixed by moving the Black Level sampling point on the Picture Adjustment toolbar.
• One cause for this is defining a mode with the Vision RGB Pro and then swapping to a Vision RGB Std. The discrepancy is due to the sync-edge not being required for the Pro but having a bearing on the correct setting for the Standard card.

Q: I am trying to capture slow modes - Vision RGB (not PRO)

• When capturing slow (H = 15kHz, V = 50Hz) signals, some tearing may be observed. To improve the performance for Sync-on-Green only, you can remove jumper LK1 which is located at the centre of the board.

If any problems persist after you have run through the troubleshooting alternatives, please complete the form below ensuring all fields are completed with as much information as possible.