We are pleased to announce the beta of Monitor Information Reporting v3.
As a participant in this beta, you will receive a 4-month license for MIR v3 and will help shape the final release of MIR v3. To participate in this private beta, please contact support@enhansoft.com and we will send you a license key and link to the MIR v3 setup program.
During the beta program Enhansoft will send out surveys to participants to help guide us with future releases of MIR v3. Support can be obtained by posting issues within support forum http://support.enhansoft.com/Forum/ or contacting support@enhansoft.com
What is new in MIR v3:
· Interface changes to provide a better listing of monitors
o Minor changes to layout
o Removed Default Monitor data
o Filtered out truly duplicated monitors.
· Option to scrub monitor data and allow for a fresh start
· Capture native pixel format data
· Capture monitor power option data
· Update the active monitor status
· Calculated serial numbers
· Even more detailed logging.
Interface
Based on feedback we have simplified the interface.
Scrubbing monitor data
Removing old monitor data from a PC can be a tedious process as demonstrated by the blog poston how to manually clean up monitor data. MIR v3 allows you to remove this data either by using an option within the MIR GUI found under tools menu or by using a command line switch “/Scrub”.
It is important to note that a reboot is required to repopulate the monitor data, otherwise you will see the following message displayed. MIR v.3 will NOT force the reboot of a system once the scrub command has been executed.
Native pixel format
The Native Pixel format also called Preferred Timing Mode or default resolution has been added. This allows an Administrator to determine if a monitor is blurriness’s caused by incorrectly setting the native pixel format. With most PCs now having liquid crystal display (LCD), most LCD flat panel monitor users do not realize that operating their monitor in a resolution other than the native resolution negatively impacts the performance of their flat panel monitor. Unlike cathode ray tube (CRT) displays, the liquid crystal display panel used in flat panel monitors has a fixed, predefined pixel format over a set area. A fixed pixel format means that if the native resolution of the LCD panel is 1,024 x 768, there are exactly 1,024 pixels in each horizontal line and 768 pixels in each vertical line or 786,432 total pixels. When a PC’s resolution is set to the native pixel format, this allows for a 1:1 ratio and yields the best results. When the non-native resolution such as the 800 x 600 is displayed on a 1024 x 768 native resolution monitor scaling occurs. Scaling adjusts the image to fill the entire monitor screen. This results in manipulation of pixels to fill the screen, but the manipulation may cause text and images to appear blurry. There is no good way to show a non-native resolution on a fixed matrix display.
Monitor Power option
What are the 4 monitor power management options and what do they mean?
The 4 options are:
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Mode
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Power
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Approximate Recovery Time
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On
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100%
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0 Second
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Standby
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< 80%
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1 Second
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Suspend
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< 30W
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5 Seconds
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Active Off
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< 8 W
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20 Seconds
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From these options we can see that a significant power saving can be achieved just by ensuring that all monitors have suspend mode and are set up to use it. For more details please see the blog post entitled “Monitor Power Management Options”
Update the Active monitor status
Within the previous screenshot for the interface section you will notice within the Active Monitor section that the HP monitor is “Marked Active”, but if you look at the screenshot below you will see that the Samsung is “Active”. You might ask yourself why have we added this feature. The answer is simple: we have determine that there are cases when a monitor is “Marked Active” when in fact is it not active. Until now, there was no way to determine this if a monitor was truly active, let alone clean up this issue. MIR v3 solved this issue in two ways, First for Vista , Windows 7 and Windows 2008 we can determine the truly active monitors; those will be set as “Active”, and other monitors will marked appropriately. Secondly, we have provided mechanisms to scrub the existing monitor data, which allows for this data to be cleaned up and the correct data to be displayed. See the scrub section for more detail.
Active Monitor States:
Active – This monitor is truly active (Vista, Window 7, Windows 2008 only)
Marked Active – This monitor is marked as active but could be a false positive (Active state for Windows XP and Windows 2003)
Non-Active – this monitor is not active
Calculated serial numbers
Based on the standards for monitors, the maximum serial number length is 13 characters. However many monitor manufacturers have serial numbers greater than 13 characters. This leaves the question: how can I determine what is the right serial number for a given monitor?
Through a number of processes we have been able to expand the functionally of MIR to help determine the correct serial number and in some cases even provide almost all of the serial number for some manufacturers. The following screenshots illustrate this.
Notice the following for each screenshot:
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HWP2601
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This HP model serial number has been confirmed to be correct as displayed.
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ACRAD92
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This Acer model, we can expand the serial number to included all but the first 2 characters. (we believe that they are always “ET” but have not added this into MIR yet pending further research.)
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DEL3013
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This Dell monitor we have displayed the serial number as it would look on the physical monitor itself, except we have replaced unknown charters with “x”
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CPQ1349
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This Compaq monitor is an example of a monitor that we have not confirmed what the physical serial number is and therefore we have placed the normal serial number within the Calculated field and marked it as Default
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We will be expanding this feature to included more Calculated Serial numbers as we confirm details for each model. Please feel free to pass along any details to help expand this feature. We require a copy of the EDID for the monitor and physical serial number as displayed on the monitor.
System Management Server 2003
MIR v3 is fully backwards compatible with SMS 2003, however the setup program is designed only for ConfigMgr, therefore will not install correctly on SMS 2003. If you require manual installation instructions, please review the MIR v2 documentation as it still applies. If you need additional assistance please contact support.
Troubleshooting:
To aid in troubleshooting, please provide us with the following details:
MIR
· A description of the issue that is occurring
· Export of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\DISPLAY
· MIR.log, generally found with the ConfigMgr client logs.
· Physical serial number of monitor as displayed (optional but recommend)
MIR Setup
· A description of the issue that is occurring
· MIR_setup.log, generally found with the ConfigMgr client logs; in some cases it will be within the %temp% directory
· A description of your environment: please include Windows version(2003/2008/2008 R2) (x86/x64), ConfigMgr version, SQL version (2005 / 2008) and location (Local to site server or remote)
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