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Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
08-21-2015, 05:23 AM (Last edited: 08-21-2015, 08:44 AM by Wizard)
Post: #771
RE: Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
(08-20-2015 02:33 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  
(08-19-2015 11:43 PM)Wizard Wrote:  This may or may not be of importance, but when windows 10 is booting and when it gets to the login screen, the screen freezes and flickers off and on before it lets me type in my password. Could the OS be detecting the 3rd party EDID override automatically and override it with the default settings?
No, that shouldn't happen. That almost sounds like the GeForce Experience problem, but that should have been worked around in Beta 3. Maybe there's another driver bug that triggers under the same circumstances. If that's the case, something is doing a hardware scan, which triggers the bug in the driver. GeForce Experience and Samsung Magician were known to do this. Try uninstalling those if you have them installed. There might be other programs that trigger the problem that I don't know about.

Well the OS detecting the override was just a guess. It's possible that that is just how windows 10 starts. Once it boots it shows the login screen for about 8 seconds, and won't let me use the keyboard until it flickers on and off. The flicker is a lot shorter in duration than if I were to just run restart.exe and restart the graphics driver.

I DO use geforce experience, but do not use samsung magician. I guess I could 'try' to uninstall geforce experience, but I refuse to use that as a solution since I do like a lot of the things that geforce experience does, but I will test uninstalling it to see if that fixes the problem, for debugging purposes.

Since it's always better to have too much information than too little, I'm going to list all of the other programs I run at startup:

  1. ToastyX Strobelight (obviously)
  2. Lightshot (lets me take, edit, and upload screenshots with like one button)
  3. OneDrive
  4. D3DOverrider (forces triple buffering in D3D9 games)
  5. Daemon Tools Lite (lets me mount ISO files on virtual disks)
  6. GeForce Experience
  7. Razer Synapse (mouse software)
  8. Killer Network Manager (some software that came with my ethernet driver, lets me customize bandwidth control which I never use)
  9. Razer Cortex (game booster)
  10. MSI Afterburner
  11. Rivatuner Statistics Server (comes with MSI Afterburner, provides ingame overlay, etc)
  12. Dropbox
  13. Process Lasso (basically task manager on steroids, monitors processes to see if they're using too much CPU, and lowers their priority if they are)
  14. Color Sustainer (basically forces ICC monitor profiles to be used)
  15. Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 (sound enhancement software)
  16. Avast Antivirus
  17. Steam
  18. Origin
  19. Evolve (basically the same thing as steam or origin)
  20. TeamViewer (remote control management)
  21. Splashtop (same as teamviewer)

I'm guessing the above won't help you much, so I'll just uninstall geforce experience and see if that solves the issue.

Actually now that I think about it, I might as well just try disabling ALL of my startup programs and see if that fixes the issue.

EDIT: Disabling ALL startup programs didn't fix the issue either, strobelight still pops up with 'no strobed refresh rates' and windows display settings still do not show the strobed refresh rates. Bummer.

EDIT2: Tried using DDU again and reinstalling the graphics driver WITHOUT Geforce Experience. Same problem. A couple of other things I just thought of. I'm using the SWAPPED version of the strobelight because I still do like to use 3d vision every now and then.
Some other probably unimportant info: I added scaled resolutions in CRU, since I do like to play SOME games in lower resolutions. I am also using the -off parameter since I don't want it starting up strobed. My main monitor is the VG248QE which I want strobelight to work with, and I have two other monitors connected as well.
None of these things should be causing the issue though. Any other suggestions that I could try would be great. By now I would have assumed it was windows 10's fault, but you're sure that's not the case?
I can't be the only one having this issue on windows 10 can I? Any other input is appreciated.
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08-22-2015, 07:35 PM
Post: #772
RE: Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
(08-21-2015 05:23 AM)Wizard Wrote:  Well the OS detecting the override was just a guess. It's possible that that is just how windows 10 starts. Once it boots it shows the login screen for about 8 seconds, and won't let me use the keyboard until it flickers on and off. The flicker is a lot shorter in duration than if I were to just run restart.exe and restart the graphics driver.

I DO use geforce experience, but do not use samsung magician. I guess I could 'try' to uninstall geforce experience, but I refuse to use that as a solution since I do like a lot of the things that geforce experience does, but I will test uninstalling it to see if that fixes the problem, for debugging purposes.
Does the flicker happen if you run restart.exe and then "Scan for hardware changes" in the Device Manager? If not, then it's not related to the GeForce Experience problem.


(08-21-2015 05:23 AM)Wizard Wrote:  
  • Splashtop (same as teamviewer)
Check the Device Manager under "Display adapters" and make sure there are no mirror drivers or anything other than your video card. Mirror drivers create virtual devices that can interfere with EDID overrides. Splashtop has a mirror driver available, but I don't think it's installed by default. Someone had issues with LogMeIn's mirror driver.


(08-21-2015 05:23 AM)Wizard Wrote:  EDIT2: Tried using DDU again and reinstalling the graphics driver WITHOUT Geforce Experience. Same problem. A couple of other things I just thought of. I'm using the SWAPPED version of the strobelight because I still do like to use 3d vision every now and then.
That explains why you were getting the message. The swapped version checks for 121/111/101 Hz instead of 120/110/100 Hz. I was asking if the default non-strobed refresh rates were available because the regular version wouldn't give that message even if the EDID override wasn't loading, although the strobing options won't work correctly.


(08-21-2015 05:23 AM)Wizard Wrote:  Some other probably unimportant info: I added scaled resolutions in CRU, since I do like to play SOME games in lower resolutions. I am also using the -off parameter since I don't want it starting up strobed. My main monitor is the VG248QE which I want strobelight to work with, and I have two other monitors connected as well.
None of these things should be causing the issue though. Any other suggestions that I could try would be great. By now I would have assumed it was windows 10's fault, but you're sure that's not the case?
I can't be the only one having this issue on windows 10 can I? Any other input is appreciated.
I haven't seen any issues with Windows 10. It's been working fine with AMD, and I just tested it with the latest NVIDIA driver (355.60). Everything works as expected even with GeForce Experience installed. I even tested the swapped version to make sure.
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08-23-2015, 04:17 AM (Last edited: 08-23-2015, 04:26 AM by Wizard)
Post: #773
RE: Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
(08-22-2015 07:35 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  
(08-21-2015 05:23 AM)Wizard Wrote:  Well the OS detecting the override was just a guess. It's possible that that is just how windows 10 starts. Once it boots it shows the login screen for about 8 seconds, and won't let me use the keyboard until it flickers on and off. The flicker is a lot shorter in duration than if I were to just run restart.exe and restart the graphics driver.

I DO use geforce experience, but do not use samsung magician. I guess I could 'try' to uninstall geforce experience, but I refuse to use that as a solution since I do like a lot of the things that geforce experience does, but I will test uninstalling it to see if that fixes the problem, for debugging purposes.
Does the flicker happen if you run restart.exe and then "Scan for hardware changes" in the Device Manager? If not, then it's not related to the GeForce Experience problem.

Just tried that now, ran restart64.exe then scanned for hardware changes, and no flickering happened. At least we narrowed that down.

(08-22-2015 07:35 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  
(08-21-2015 05:23 AM)Wizard Wrote:  
  • Splashtop (same as teamviewer)
Check the Device Manager under "Display adapters" and make sure there are no mirror drivers or anything other than your video card. Mirror drivers create virtual devices that can interfere with EDID overrides. Splashtop has a mirror driver available, but I don't think it's installed by default. Someone had issues with LogMeIn's mirror driver.

The only thing listed under Display adapters is my GPU. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti.

(08-22-2015 07:35 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  
(08-21-2015 05:23 AM)Wizard Wrote:  EDIT2: Tried using DDU again and reinstalling the graphics driver WITHOUT Geforce Experience. Same problem. A couple of other things I just thought of. I'm using the SWAPPED version of the strobelight because I still do like to use 3d vision every now and then.

That explains why you were getting the message. The swapped version checks for 121/111/101 Hz instead of 120/110/100 Hz. I was asking if the default non-strobed refresh rates were available because the regular version wouldn't give that message even if the EDID override wasn't loading, although the strobing options won't work correctly.

So does this mean that I should try the regular version to see if it will fix the problem?

(08-22-2015 07:35 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  
(08-21-2015 05:23 AM)Wizard Wrote:  Some other probably unimportant info: I added scaled resolutions in CRU, since I do like to play SOME games in lower resolutions. I am also using the -off parameter since I don't want it starting up strobed. My main monitor is the VG248QE which I want strobelight to work with, and I have two other monitors connected as well.
None of these things should be causing the issue though. Any other suggestions that I could try would be great. By now I would have assumed it was windows 10's fault, but you're sure that's not the case?
I can't be the only one having this issue on windows 10 can I? Any other input is appreciated.
I haven't seen any issues with Windows 10. It's been working fine with AMD, and I just tested it with the latest NVIDIA driver (355.60). Everything works as expected even with GeForce Experience installed. I even tested the swapped version to make sure.

Thanks for checking that out, I appreciate it. I really don't know what else to try though. I've even done a full reinstall of windows at some point, to no avail.

Another thing I just thought of. Is it possible that my monitor's driver (the driver for the device under 'Monitors' in the Device Manager) could be interfering with the EDID Override? I installed a windows 8 driver for my VG248QE because there wasn't one for windows 10, and in the past I used a windows 7 one.
Or is it possible that because I have so many scaled resolutions in CRU, it causes windows to not understand the override and ignore it. I only added the ones that were there by default though, but I don't fully understand how the custom extension block works. I'm just grasping at straws here.

Normally I wouldn't care about something so trivial as running restart64.exe on boot, but the fact that it isn't working properly makes me think there's something wrong with my setup, plus debugging helps you out too, so I get the satisfaction of knowing my setup is correct, and I don't have a bad driver etc, and to help you determine if there's a problem within your program so someone else doesn't run across this issue.

Thanks for your quick replies! I wasn't expecting this much help for a free product! I really appreciate it!

EDIT. So I did some more debugging in CRU. Every time I restart my displays with restart64.exe, it will add an inactive monitor EDID profile to the list. Is that a sign that there's something wrong with my monitor driver?
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08-24-2015, 12:45 PM
Post: #774
RE: Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
(08-23-2015 04:17 AM)Wizard Wrote:  So does this mean that I should try the regular version to see if it will fix the problem?
No, I'm just saying the regular version wouldn't show the message because the default non-strobed 120/110/100 Hz should be available even if the EDID override wasn't loading, but the strobing options won't work correctly.


(08-23-2015 04:17 AM)Wizard Wrote:  Another thing I just thought of. Is it possible that my monitor's driver (the driver for the device under 'Monitors' in the Device Manager) could be interfering with the EDID Override? I installed a windows 8 driver for my VG248QE because there wasn't one for windows 10, and in the past I used a windows 7 one.
Monitors don't need drivers. Monitor "drivers" are just information files, and most don't do anything useful other than set the device name and maybe install a useless color profile, which can be done separately through the color management control panel. EDID overrides are part of the monitor information in the registry, but installing a monitor driver shouldn't interfere with that because most monitor drivers don't have EDID overrides, and strobelight-setup.exe would override that anyway. I just installed the ASUS VG248QE Windows 8 WHQL driver just to make sure.


(08-23-2015 04:17 AM)Wizard Wrote:  Or is it possible that because I have so many scaled resolutions in CRU, it causes windows to not understand the override and ignore it. I only added the ones that were there by default though, but I don't fully understand how the custom extension block works. I'm just grasping at straws here.
The graphics driver processes the override, so this wouldn't be a Windows issue. What scaled resolutions did you add? The graphics driver automatically adds some common lower resolutions as scaled resolutions even if they are not defined. Most of the lower resolutions defined by the ASUS VG248QE should already exist by default.


(08-23-2015 04:17 AM)Wizard Wrote:  EDIT. So I did some more debugging in CRU. Every time I restart my displays with restart64.exe, it will add an inactive monitor EDID profile to the list. Is that a sign that there's something wrong with my monitor driver?
It's normal for there to be one other inactive entry because it switches to the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter driver while restarting. If it keeps creating more and more entries, then something weird is going on.
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08-26-2015, 07:38 AM (Last edited: 09-01-2015, 09:32 PM by Wizard)
Post: #775
RE: Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
(08-24-2015 12:45 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  Monitors don't need drivers. Monitor "drivers" are just information files, and most don't do anything useful other than set the device name and maybe install a useless color profile, which can be done separately through the color management control panel. EDID overrides are part of the monitor information in the registry, but installing a monitor driver shouldn't interfere with that because most monitor drivers don't have EDID overrides, and strobelight-setup.exe would override that anyway. I just installed the ASUS VG248QE Windows 8 WHQL driver just to make sure.
That's good to know. And thank you for testing that for me too. I'm still a bit new to technical stuff about monitors and drivers. I'm more of a software person.

(08-24-2015 12:45 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  The graphics driver processes the override, so this wouldn't be a Windows issue. What scaled resolutions did you add? The graphics driver automatically adds some common lower resolutions as scaled resolutions even if they are not defined. Most of the lower resolutions defined by the ASUS VG248QE should already exist by default.
Actually I didn't even know windows added scaled resolutions by default. The main reason I even add any are so that I can tell NVIDIA to use Display - No Scaling instead of GPU - No Scaling in the control panel, as I heard a rumor that having the GPU selected at all increases input lag. I guess it would be a good idea to just use the strobelight defaults, as I also heard that having too many resolutions will cause the entire EDID override to be ignored, which (I hope) may be the case here, since I'm all out of ideas tbh.

(08-24-2015 12:45 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  It's normal for there to be one other inactive entry because it switches to the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter driver while restarting. If it keeps creating more and more entries, then something weird is going on.

Looks like you were right about that, I investigated by going into Device Manager and found a couple of hidden monitor devices, so I just removed them and CRU stopped showing that.

I'm still confused as to how this could be a driver problem since I can't be the only one running windows 10 on an nvidia card with the latest driver. And if it's some sort of corruption within the driver then how is that even possible when I completely reinstalled my drivers with DDU? The only logical explanation that I can think of is some software I'm using is interfering, but I turned all my startup software off, unless something is running behind the scenes.

At this point I'd just like to know why it's happening, even if I can't fix it. I know running restart.exe isn't that big of an issue, what I'm worried about is that there's something wrong with my setup, since no one else is having this issue, that worries me.

EDIT: Question: Why does device manager show a hidden unused device for my VG248 whenever I restart it? This hidden device in CRU has the default EDID profile associated with it. For testing purposes, I have a different monitor set as my default monitor, because you told me that Windows would create an inactive display because of the safe mode. But when it's in safe mode, it now uses the default monitor, which isn't the VG248 anymore, but the VG248 is still creating that inactive display. Could this be the issue?

EDIT2: I used CRU to override the EDID for another monitor, and it also wasn't applied on boot. I had to run restart64.exe for it to use the override. Another indication it's a driver problem?

EDIT3: Rebooted today, and for some reason I did not need to run restart64.exe. The only difference I noticed is that wifi had some weird error that required me to reconnect, but I doubt that's relevant.
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09-07-2015, 08:49 AM
Post: #776
RE: Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
Hey guys!

The LightBoost app doesnt work for me.

I reboot my pc after installing the refresh rates and it says: "No compatible displays found"

Im on an ASUS VG278HE; AMD R9 290; Win 8.1; Catalyst-Version: 14.12 (note: it isnt the latest graphics driver, (15.71))

I did the debug.exe thing, heres the code:

[2015-09-07 10:40:16.159] LOAD(AMD): LoadLibrary("atiadlxx.dll") = SUCCESS
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.163] LOAD(AMD): ADL_Main_Control_Create() = SUCCESS
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.163] LOAD(NVIDIA): NvAPI_Initialize() = ERROR -2
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.231] INIT: No compatible displays found.

I hope this includes everything you need to know!
Pls help m8z.
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09-07-2015, 12:53 PM
Post: #777
RE: Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
(09-07-2015 08:49 AM)Admos123 Wrote:  Hey guys!

The LightBoost app doesnt work for me.

I reboot my pc after installing the refresh rates and it says: "No compatible displays found"

Im on an ASUS VG278HE; AMD R9 290; Win 8.1; Catalyst-Version: 14.12 (note: it isnt the latest graphics driver, (15.71))

I did the debug.exe thing, heres the code:

[2015-09-07 10:40:16.159] LOAD(AMD): LoadLibrary("atiadlxx.dll") = SUCCESS
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.163] LOAD(AMD): ADL_Main_Control_Create() = SUCCESS
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.163] LOAD(NVIDIA): NvAPI_Initialize() = ERROR -2
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.231] INIT: No compatible displays found.

I hope this includes everything you need to know!
Pls help m8z.
That's strange. The log doesn't show any responses from the monitor, but the ASUS VG278HE should be compatible.

Are you using a 32-bit version of Windows? That shouldn't matter, but if you're using the 64-bit version, it should be loading atiadlxy.dll and not atiadlxx.dll.

Are you using dual-link DVI? LightBoost will not work with HDMI or VGA.

Make sure DDC/CI is enabled in the monitor's OSD: System Setup > OSD Setup > DDC/CI
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09-07-2015, 10:40 PM
Post: #778
RE: Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
(09-07-2015 12:53 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  
(09-07-2015 08:49 AM)Admos123 Wrote:  Hey guys!

The LightBoost app doesnt work for me.

I reboot my pc after installing the refresh rates and it says: "No compatible displays found"

Im on an ASUS VG278HE; AMD R9 290; Win 8.1; Catalyst-Version: 14.12 (note: it isnt the latest graphics driver, (15.71))

I did the debug.exe thing, heres the code:

[2015-09-07 10:40:16.159] LOAD(AMD): LoadLibrary("atiadlxx.dll") = SUCCESS
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.163] LOAD(AMD): ADL_Main_Control_Create() = SUCCESS
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.163] LOAD(NVIDIA): NvAPI_Initialize() = ERROR -2
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.231] INIT: No compatible displays found.

I hope this includes everything you need to know!
Pls help m8z.
That's strange. The log doesn't show any responses from the monitor, but the ASUS VG278HE should be compatible.

Are you using a 32-bit version of Windows? That shouldn't matter, but if you're using the 64-bit version, it should be loading atiadlxy.dll and not atiadlxx.dll.

Are you using dual-link DVI? LightBoost will not work with HDMI or VGA.

Make sure DDC/CI is enabled in the monitor's OSD: System Setup > OSD Setup > DDC/CI

I use the 64 bit version. I use DL-DVI. DDC/IC is enabled. It is loading atiadlxx.dll.

*Sidenote:* I correctly installed the app about 8 months ago on windows 7 and everything worked just fine on my system. I then forgot about it and switched to windows 8. Im currently gaming a lot and I want to try it out again. Exact same system now, no hardware change. But now it doesnt work anymore.
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09-07-2015, 11:51 PM
Post: #779
RE: Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
(09-07-2015 12:53 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  
(09-07-2015 08:49 AM)Admos123 Wrote:  Hey guys!

The LightBoost app doesnt work for me.

I reboot my pc after installing the refresh rates and it says: "No compatible displays found"

Im on an ASUS VG278HE; AMD R9 290; Win 8.1; Catalyst-Version: 14.12 (note: it isnt the latest graphics driver, (15.71))

I did the debug.exe thing, heres the code:

[2015-09-07 10:40:16.159] LOAD(AMD): LoadLibrary("atiadlxx.dll") = SUCCESS
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.163] LOAD(AMD): ADL_Main_Control_Create() = SUCCESS
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.163] LOAD(NVIDIA): NvAPI_Initialize() = ERROR -2
[2015-09-07 10:40:16.231] INIT: No compatible displays found.

I hope this includes everything you need to know!
Pls help m8z.
That's strange. The log doesn't show any responses from the monitor, but the ASUS VG278HE should be compatible.

Are you using a 32-bit version of Windows? That shouldn't matter, but if you're using the 64-bit version, it should be loading atiadlxy.dll and not atiadlxx.dll.

Are you using dual-link DVI? LightBoost will not work with HDMI or VGA.

Make sure DDC/CI is enabled in the monitor's OSD: System Setup > OSD Setup > DDC/CI

Decided to do a quick test to see if I could help at all..

It is loading atiadlxx.dll on my windows 7 x64 system also, not atiadlxy.dll (I already have lightboost unlocked).


[2015-09-07 16:48:45.585] LOAD(AMD): LoadLibrary("atiadlxx.dll") = SUCCESS
[2015-09-07 16:48:45.585] LOAD(AMD): ADL_Main_Control_Create() = SUCCESS
[2015-09-07 16:48:45.595] LOAD(NVIDIA): NvAPI_Initialize() = ERROR -2
[2015-09-07 16:48:45.795] INIT(AMD, 0, 0): 3D = TRUE
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09-11-2015, 06:14 AM
Post: #780
RE: Strobelight - LightBoost Utility for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA
Where do I get this debug.exe thing you guys are all using? I'd like to see if it can help my problem at all.
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