Monitor is "over range"?
 

Planar 16:9 17" Monitor
Radeon 9500 Pro
Windows XP Home with SP2
512 mb RAM


So I installed Half-life 2 and it was up and running. I was changing the video setting and as soon as I changed the in-game settings to 16:9 the monitor screen turned blue and it said "over range"

Everytime I start it now it says this.

What's it mean, how to fixy?

have you tried,going back to the previous setting? just a thought .

When it first happened, I closed the program. So everytime I start it up now it just goes to the blue screen.

http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tip/15245.html

found this in a quick search. hope it helps some . good luck.

This happens when I put the resolution or refresh rate at too high of a setting. Try to turn down the resolution, or put it in your monitors native setting.

-- edit --

If you can't change those settings because it goes into the out of range screen, get a bigger monitor that can handle higher settings, and change them with that.

Most games have a .ini file or some sort with the settings in plain text that you can change. If nothing else, backup your save game files and reinstall the game.

Open steam.
Click "Play games".
Right-click HL2. Select Properties.
Click "Launch options" button. Enter "-autoconfig" without the quotes.
(This will try to autodetect the ideal mode - normally just the first time it runs.)
Click close.
Play.

You'll want to remove the autoconfig option at some point or it'll reset to its idea of what's best every time it starts.

This is frustrating.

None of the suggestions have worked, thanks though.

And I uninstalled the game, deleting any visible left overs, than reinstalled, but it happened again. I must have missed some files.

Any more suggestions would be helpful.

Let us know if the -autoconfig option doesn't work. You can mess with the registry. That's best left for last though.

That didn't work either.

Try "-window -console" instead of "-autoconfig".

That doesn't work either.

Okay, you're running Half Life 2, right? Not CS?

That's right. Just bought it yesterday.

Right, but you have other choices of things to run that HL2. Just making sure you're playing HL2 and not CS:Source.

For grins, can you try changing the startup options for CS? I'll be home in a bit and will take a look at my HL2 box to see what registry stuff might be fighting you.

That doesn't seem to do it either.

I'm out for the night, but let me know if you figure anything else out.

I really appreciate your help. Thank you.

It's possible something besides HL2 is forcing the sync out of bounds when you launch HL2. Do you have any resolution/sync assistant software running? Check your Notification Area. Something like Multires? (Shipped with Omegadrivers, but numerous others have similar function.) If you find anything with resolution/color/sync options quit it and try HL2 again with the -autodetect option.

Barring anything like above, the shotgun approach would be to uninstall again and make sure you clean out everything. Be sure to uninstall Steam as well as HL2. Run regedit. Search for:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve ...

If it's still there after the uninstall, delete the entire Valve tree. Reinstall.

If it doesn't work then I'd go the route others here have suggested and explore using other monitors temporarily to get things working.

I got it, thanks a million.

I'd ave plumped for "system restore" myslf - but I'm a bit of a luddite. :D