The other day I connected an Acer AL2016W tft monitor to my Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop. This monitor is able to display a resolution of maximal 1680×1050 pixels. Unfortunately my laptop didn’t allow me to use that resolution. At least not with the current graphic drivers installled. So I downloaded an installed the latest driver from Dell, hoping this will solve the issue. However the most current driver that Dell offers for Inspiron 5100/Mobility Radeon 7500c is dated 2003, and also limits the use of the 1680×1050 resolution.

Looking for a more recent driver I downloaded software from Ati at http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html. My laptop is using Windows XP Home, so I downloaded the ‘Catalyst Software Suite’. The installation of this software and drivers didn’t work; It could not identify the graphic adapter as an ‘Ati Mobility Radeon 7500′. Not being happy with this, I started to google for an alternative. And luckily I found that alternative!

The alternative is called the ‘DH Mobility Modder.net’. You can download this piece of software at http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool/. This tool doesn’t include drivers itself, but it can modify drivers that are supplied by Ati. After running the ‘DH Mobility Modder.net’ tool on the ‘Catalyst Software Suite’ installation directory, it will install the latest graphic drivers without any problem.

And last, but not least… my Inspiron 5100 now displays ’1680 by 1050, True Color (32 bit), 60 Hertz’