- Samsung
A customer recently returned one of our VGA with Audio specialty PC to TV cables because he couldn’t get it to work. With the cable plugged into his Samsung Series3 330 (LN32A330J1DXZA) HDTV the “PC” source was unavailable for selection (commonly described as “greyed out”). This is a common problem with Samsung HDTVs because you cannot select a video source that the unit does not detect.
I have often read about this problem with Samsung HDTVs. However this case piqued my interest because I have the exact same model Samsung HDTV and the exact same VGA cable and mine works just fine. So now I can rule out the possibility that there is something wrong with the HDTV and the cable. The problem must be with the PC. Just in case, I called Samsung to see if a firmware update was available for this model HDTV. It turns out there is not; so our HDTVs must be the same and I can in fact rule out the HDTV and the VGA cable.
To say that something is wrong with the HDTV is not technically correct. It’s just that the Samsung HDTV wants to confirm that a PC is in fact connected to it prior to letting a user select the “PC” input mode. Other HDTVs may or may not work like this. The problem, it turns out, is in how PCs and/or graphics controllers interact with the VGA connector (also known as the d-sub 15 connector). Here’s some tips on how to correct the problem; if all else fails, I”ll show you how to fool your Samsung HDTV into thinking a PC is attached.
This customer’s particular PC was a Sony brand laptop with an Nvidea graphics adapter. So here’s what I recommend:
1. Check that your VGA cable has all 15 pins (3 rows of 5). Some cheap cables may not. If you find that your VGA cable does not have 15 pins, order a new VGA with Audio PC to TV cable.
2. Update your graphics driver. You’ll need to visit your graphics card manufacturer’s website to find, download and install the latest driver.
3. Test your cable. If no luck continue . . .
4. Update your PC BIOS (built-in operating system). You’ll have to visit your PC manufacturer’s website and look for a “downloads and/or drivers” link. In addition to updating your BIOS, check for any other files that you can update. For example, this customer has a Sony VAIO VGN-FS780/W laptop. Sony lists the following updates available for download: BIOS, FIRMWARE, and Sony Utilities DLL update. The description for the DLL update states “This utility updates the Sony® Utilities DLL for the Sony VAIO® to version 6.4.0.06290 and addresses an issue where the computer is unable to use certain monitors.”
Here’s some links to check for drivers and/or software updates:
5. Make sure to reboot your PC after installing new drivers. Otherwise they may not take effect. Test you cable again. If no luck . . .
6. Unfortunately if you’re on this step then your PC is not providing the correct signal to your HDTV. So I’ve discovered that what the Samsung HDTV is looking for is a ground signal on pin#10. Take a look at the picture below. Plug the VGA cable into your HDTV and use a paper clip to short pin #10 to the casing on your VGA connector. As soon as the #10 pin is connected to the ground, the “PC” input option on your HDTV will light up and you will be able to select it. Once selected, you can connect the cable to your PC and configure your graphics properties as detailed in our PC to TV cable installation guide.
VGA (d-sub 15) connector
You can take a look at the VGA pinout developed by the Video Electronics Standards Association to see what pins do what. VESA was created because of ”the phenomenal growth of graphics capabilities for personal computers and the resulting proliferation of non-compatible products. . . .” If the “PC” input is not available for selection on your Samsung HDTV, it is probably because your PC manufacturer has not grounded pin #10, identified as “Sync Ground.” Please contact them and ask why?
The VGA standard now supports EDID (Extended Display Identification Data). This means that your HDTV can actually “talk” to your PC and identify it’s properties (manufacturer, resolutions supported, etc.) You can easily download and run a free software utility that lets you see if your monitor (or HDTV) is communicating with your PC. It’s called Monitor Asset Manager and it is made available by EnTech Taiwan.
As always, we’d like to hear from you. If you discover any useful tidbits of information please email us and we’ll be sure to pass it along to the next guy:
* * * VIDEO ADDED JULY 21, 2009 * * *
Tags: samsung pc hdtv vga d-sub tv grey gray greyed grayed out input select mode
I have followed all your recommendations but to no avail.I am trying to connect my dell inspiron 1520 laptop to my samsung LE32R41BD via a VGA cable.Have tried to short out the number 10 pin as suggested but no good.I know that the laptop is signalling to the tv but yet the PC outputrefuses to light up.
You should not have any problems with a Dell PC. Have you enabled your VGA output? Check out the Monitor Key Method.
when i attach the vga cable to the laptop it immediately bleeps and changes its resolution to a bigger display.I right click anywhere on the dispay and go in to personalize and it then gives me the option to connect to an external display which says its already connected.It then asks me how i would like the display to appear of which i have marked the mirrored option but still the p.c output option is greyed out.
(1) try a different PC; (2) try a different TV; (3) have you tried cycling through the various output formats via the Monitor Key Method?
I have a Dell pc and a new HDTV with both vga and HDMI connections.Which cable should i use ?This is my first comment
@ Jean - use HDMI
Tried a differnet cable and hey presto all is well with the world again.Stay away from cheap vga cables.Anything under a fiver is a rip off.Thanks for all your help.
I couldn’t make the Samsung HDTV to activate the PC option with the cable not even making the short with #10 pin.
So I took my PC VGA cable (Came with LG flat display) and it worked just fine! Didn’t even have to ground pin N°10.
Curiously, the failing cable does work on my LG Flatron, although I can see a little blur on fine text. As someone said: Keep away from cheap cables.
i have a dell inspiron and im facin the same problem i tried it on a different tv (toshiba) it worked but when i connect the same cable to the samsung it never works i have 2 LCD samsung and i tried them both but nothin works , i tried the shorting and nothin happens
plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz some body find a solution its driving me nuttttttts iv tried every thing every thing i even downloaded the manual nothin nothin i grounded the pin 10 and nothin i tried 5 different laptops 2 Samsung lcd’s and the same i hate Samsung i haaaaaate it
From the comments posted here, it appears that grounding the #10 pin on a cheap cable does nothing. Try a quality cable.
Hello.
Today i received my mac mini.
But once i connected it to my Samsung: LE32R86BD through HDMI i get no signal at all and the option for PC is not enabled on the TV settings/menu.
How can i solve this?
The PC option is for the “PC Input” (or VGA connection). If you are attached to HDMI, select the correct HDMI input. Read your Samsung manual; mine requires that a PC be attached to HDMI2. If you attach to HDMI2, select HDMI2 as your input source using the “Source” button on your remote control.
Yes, tried it with the VGA and it works great. But once i plug the mini port -> HDMI and the HDMI cable to the HDMI input 2 of the tv it just doesnt work. No signal.
Well I tried to short the pin and for about three seconds it does show it as not greyed out however it goes right back to being grayed out. This is the Samsung 46″ LCD. thx
You are a genius man! Even though my VGA cable did have 15 pins, and stated “High quality, high speed” it didn’t work initially.
For those who with the bad cable, do the grounding behind the TV itself. Then push the ‘Source’ button on the remote to see the PC connection detected. Once you fooled the TV to have a PC connection, you can remove the grounding pin and connect the cable. The PC output will be on the TV, with the “Check the signal” message.
As a permanent solution I used a stapler pin in the #10 female socket behind the TV, along with the VGA cable.
@admin and @seeyar… you guys are genius. After shorting directly behind by Samsung TV, im able to get the display from my laptop to TV. but do i need to do this shorting every time i switch on?? is there any other way? Also if i use a VGA to DVI to HDMI will it solve my issue? Thanks in advance!
I have a samsung plasma tv similar to the one shown in the video (PL-42C91HP). Recently it stopped displaying s video in the source list and now I’m unable to connect my laptop to the tv this way. worked perfectly fine before just wondering is there a way to fix this to use svideo mode. when i press source on the remote i only get tv and avi. thanks
Well, first off refer to your Samsung owners manual. It’s full of useful information. If you can’t find your answer, there is a Samsung rep who can help you out on the CNET Samsung forum
I worked around the same issue the whole day .. tried everything , updated my laptop and all the drivers .. without any success .. This is how it worked :-)) .. i have changed the VGA cable to an old cable .. much cheaper than mine .. and it worked .. you have just to let the screen definition as stated by the manual (in my case : 1024×728 @60 Hz).
Now, I reviewed all the topics about the cables and VGA pin definitions ..
Thanks to you guys .. you’ve put me on track.
Hope it helps
I have a dell inspiron 1545 with windows 7 and a samsung plasma tv model pn42a450p1d. I connect the laptop to the tv with a 15 pin vga to vga cable. I have tried tricking the tv but no luck. Any help?
What do you mean by “no luck?” What happens? What do you see? Where did you get your cable?
Well the pc icon didn’t light up. I tired shortening the casing on the cable but it won’t light up on the tv. I got the cable off ebay. The laptop does however detect the tv.
I tried my cable today and no luck. I had an older VGA 15-pin cable, tried to short the 10th pin and the TV did not highlight the PC option. I’m either going to try a better quality VGA cable or just bite the bullet and go to HDMI and start a new round of headaches! The TV I have is a Samsung LN40A650.
I got my Samsung TV used as a gift from friends that were moving across the country. After trying many times, I concluded that I couldn’t successfully get the PC connection to work. But a co-worker sent me the link to this web page. Shorting pin 10 to the casing did the trick! Thanks so much for the info. But I can’t expect my wife to repeat the procedure every time. So my idea is to get a female cable end connector and wire pin 10 to ground. Then my wife can plug the modified connector to the end of the cable in place of fumbling around with a paper clip.
THANKS!!!
Hello guys,
Here I am having a bit of a different issues with a LE26R81B and a Dell Latitude D820 with an nvidia card, while the PC input is not gray, I can select it with no problems. In my case I had a very old VGA cable from a CRT monitor that used to work only on 1024 x 768. Now I don’t have that cable anymore (it’s lost), got a new one (with all pins connected & measured), my laptop detects a Samsung external display, it detects all the resolutions from the user manual of the TV (including 1360 x 768), but when I switch it on (either in clone, extended or primary display) the LCD turns black and the power led starts blinking as if the resolution wasn’t supported or smth (even though there is no error message on the screen). I tried 3 laptops and 2 measured cables, having the same result, different OS, different manufacturers. I even installed the Monitor Asset Manager that was mentioned somewhere and it detects the Samsung TV, having one line with this info:
Native/preferred timing.. 1360×768p at 60Hz (16:9)
I completely ran out of ideas, is there any other brilliant mind that could help me solve this crappy issue?
Make sure your PC resolution is set to one of your TV’s supported resolutions and make sure you have the PC refresh rate set to 60.
I already tried every resolution possible and every refresh rate possible (starting with 800 x 600 @ 60Hz). Every time the screen goes totally black (after it’s initially blue showing PC DHR in the top left corner) and the power led starts blinking.
Just thought I’d let you know my experiences with this problem;
I found that shorting the 10th pin on the plug at the far end of the VGA cable didn’t work for me (admittedly a cheapo 30ft cable from ebay). But then I read a suggestion from another guy about wrapping a small filament of wire around the 10th pin on the plug that goes into the TV end, bending it back over the metal casing and then plugging it in - and that did the trick, the cable works fine.
Another thing I found is that my TV (Samsung LE37A457) detects the cable even without the other end plugged into any PC source (i.e. it doesn’t even require a signal). This suggests that the signal source isn’t even a factor, it’s simply an issue of grounding the 10th pin on certain VGA cables. No need for the BIOS update advice perhaps?
I’ve also read somewhere that Samsung are making their newer TV’s with the PC Input mode ‘always on’ to overcome this problem in the future.
Hello, I still haven’t been able to un-gray the PC input selection. However, I was able to force my Samsung LCD monitor to detect the PC input by pressing the ‘PC’ button on the remote. It displayed fine after I set the aspect ratio of my laptop’s resolution to match the Samsung’s, so I did not think that I’d need a new driver for my Intel video card.
But my only problem now is that the picture on the screen is not centered. This means the picture is positioned too far to the left, so the left part of the picture is not visible, while the right side of the screen is just black (although the right side of the picture can be seen). What can I do to adjust the position of the picture? In older monitors there are buttons which could be used to move the picture from side to side, as well as up and down.
I am using a VGA cable since my laptop does not have an HDMI output. I would really appreciate your thoughts on this, thank you.
Cheers Stu (april 25th post) for the filament of wire idea, it actually worked. I was pulling my hair out with frustration trying to find a fix. Im not very technical but used a small copper wire to wrap around the 10# pin to the outer ground before pluggin into the back of my tv. Now just need sound….
Go to your graphics properties and look for an option to “center screen.” To get to your graphics properties, try CTRL and ALT at the same time, then press F12. If that doesn’t work, try right-clicking on your desktop and select “graphics properties.” Or go thru your control panel START>>CONTROL PANEL>>DISPLAY PROPERTIES.
Hi guys, the solution here presented is well thought, and nicely made..
But this is asuming you have a at least médium quality vga cable.
In my case, it was a los quality cable.. There for, this solution didnt worked.
I opened my vga cable to find out that the 10th pin was not soldered to any cable!!!
So, on the TV end of the cable, i soldered the ground cable (black) to the 10 pin internally. Assemble all again.
And vuala!! The pc input is aviable!!
Hope this solves things for some of you. Will update with links to pictures.
Thanks Dan (June 8th post) glad it worked for you.
Ironically my vga cable developed a fault just after my post so I ordered another cheapo one from a different ebay seller (cost slightly more but I guess I still haven’t learnt my lesson!) and this one was detected straight away by the TV.
There appear to be many variations on how these cables are wired.
As for sound, I already have a headphone extension cable running from the TV so I just use that (plug it into my laptop headphone socket with an adaptor and then into the TV audo input).
Seem to spend half my life finding workarounds for things that don’t work on computers….kind of getting used to it now. lol….cry…
I have not a HDMI output on my laptop, and the cheap trick on the VGA cable that DID work previously is not doing anything. The TV is the issue here as the laptop can output through the VGA on a CRT screen. My solution …. sad but true … used my flatmate’s xbox 360 to stream the films to the TV, which ironically is using HDMI ….. I am not sure I will ever get a Samsung ever again.
I had a similar problem. When connected by a VGA cable, my samsung 32 inch TV keeps showing the PC option grayed, even though my Win7 Sony Laptop detects it fine as Samsung. Even after this TV will not let me switch to PC input.
Changing the cable to a different one worked like a charm.
Hey thanks a bunch for this info! PEOPLE THIS WORKS!!
I was struggling for an entire evening and googling the hell out of this issue. I bought an off brang xbox VGA cable to hook my xbox 360 up to my Samsung. Who the hell wants to pay $40 for that microsft cable? Well it turned out my $7 xbox 360 vga cable would get no signal on my Samsung LN. Apparently the Samsung tvs are really picky about it. The off brand cables are supposed to work with everything else.
After reading this article I took about a quarter an inch of solder wire and wrapped it around pin 10 and ran it to the side of the casing. I shit you not I wedged the cable into the back of my Samsung solder wire and all. As soon as I turned on the TV and went to sources, PC was available. I’m now playing my 360 via the VGA hook up. It looks great.
Thanks!
dumb question….but how exactly do you stick a paper clip in to ground this thing without damaging your TV input? I’m confused….any pics would be helpful
You don’t stick a paper clip into the connector; you just temporarily short the pin to the casing until you select “PC” as the input source on your TV.
hi can some one help me i have a LCD 26″ tv in my bed room my labtop works on that one but it wont work on my LCD 46″ samsung i have tryed the paper clip but it wont work 4 me can some one help me thanks
Try a quality cable: PCTVCables.com
Dude you kick ass. Ive been trying to figure this out for years!
I have a Samsung LCD tv and an HP laptop. I have successfully connected them 3 times in the past with a 15 pin cable. Now suddenly the laptop recognizes the tv, but the tv does not recognize the laptop, I only get a blacked out screen. Why did it word a few days ago but not anymore? This is driving me crazy as I just figured out how to get it to work.
so i followed the steps on here, i have used my 330 since i got it for my pc i moved it to school and now it doesn’t work. i plug it into my roommates samsung 360 and it works. not sure what to do.
Yes! Thank you so much Stu (April 25th post)! This worked for me! Using a small filament around the 10th pin that and plugging that directly into the VGA TV port worked for me!
I have spent endless hours on trying to solve this problem, so happy that you have helped me solve it!
On a side note: this is first, AND LAST, samsung tv I will ever buy.
Thanks a lot. your the best! It works perfectly!
Thanks a lot!
Your the best!
It works for me!…
Your the savior!
Check it out yo! Pin 15 needs to be shorted as well as pin 10…..then it will actually work. I can confirm this, just tried it twice. PC input isn’t grayed out and the picture looks great (1920 X 1080)!
Thanks all for the tips! I’ve got a 4 year old Samsung LCD HDTV and a 4 year old Sony Vaio FJ290 running XP Home in a docking station and wasn’t able to get the Samsung to recognize the laptop even after updating all the drivers and the BIOS. After reading through this site a few times I ended up taking a copper strand from some old speaker wire, wrapping it around the base of the #10 pin using some tweezers and plugging the whole thing into the docking station. It worked great!
Thanks for the great explanation on how this works.
I have a similar problem with the samsung lcd tv. The output from the desktop is seen clearly on the tv using the vga cable (i did not have to short pin 10)
However the message continues to be on the screen “PC” & “Check Signal Cable”
Any suggestions.
Thanks,
Sriram,