screen rotated 90 degrees

[chrisgreaves]

This is driving me bonkers. I accidentally slipped while trying a Shift-Ctrl-N (set Normal style) on the keyboard and the display has rotated 90 degress counter-clockwise.
Display and mouse. (When my hand slides the mouse to the right, it goes vertically up the screen, when I slide down it goes to the right; this does strange things to my brain at this hur of the night)

I'm typing this on the other machine, my old Big beige Box - same shared monitor - so this BBB machine with the CRT is OK, but the Laptop computer using this CRT is not OK.
The Laptop LCD is rotated too.
I must have triggered something in the laptop.

There is no Windows key and no (laptop) Fn key on this old beige keyboard. Whatever I did I did through this keyboard.
I've tried rebooting.
Run through (screen) right-click properties. I see nothing there that suggests rotation.

Run through troubleshooting. Nada.

[ledunch]

I did not know there was a key sequence for the rotation - good find.
If your computer has an nvidia display controller, the sequence to set display rotation is given here http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/vide...436-1/usage.htm near the bottom.
Other controllers may have a similar set of options.

Paul

[chrisgreaves]

FIXED!

> I did not know there was a key sequence for the rotation - good find.
Worst discovery of [/i]my[/i] life after finding out that I wasn't a cat! (grin) Certainly put the damper on the rest of the evening, I can tell you. Interesting discoveries about the brain and motor motion, when your eye tell you "slide the mouse across", and it goes down. Also strange experiments with a laptop sitting on its side, propped up like an open book, but with the mouse pad on what would be the even-numbered page and the right-forearm obliterating the screen.

>nvidia display controller,
Sadly, no. Although I woke up at 2:00 a.m. in a sweat in case I'd have to reinstall WinXP, run through several light-years of updates, ditto my copies of 97, 2000, 2003 and 2007, not to mention changing my default templates path etc.

I got my camera ready to take more photos, powered up the laptop and noticed that whereas at 10pm the rainbow on black "Windows" had come up horizontally and the white "welcome" on blue vertically (the start of the rotate 90 view) the white "welcome" now was horizontal. As was everything else. So I unplugged the laptop and worked in bed from 2am to about 3:30.

That initial horizontal "Windows" suggested it wasn't the monitor that was rotated.
The resurrection of horizontal suggested that the laptop/WinXP was OK.
Therefore I figured it must be in my KVM switch (which uses its default of Scroll-Scroll-Up-arrow to flip between video sources).

With the comforting thought that all I had to do was find the instruction sheet, I drifted off to sleep.

It's now 9 a.m. and I can't find the KVM instruction sheet. It's probably partway down a Vermicomposter.

Moved by your comment, I searched Google groups and found many remedies. Posted here for future reference:

"This is due to video card settings. right click on desktop>properties>settings tab>advanced button>look for
NVRotate and click it and from there you can refix the settings. "

"Ctrl+Alt+UpArrow" (Yeah! Right!! It'll be that easy!!!)

"Right click the Desktop, select Properties>Settings>Advanced. See if there is a setting in there to rotate the screen back to normal. If you have Nvidia
software installed try clicking on the tab for your graphics card and have a look for NVRotate on the left hand side."

"Just as R.C. White and JCH pointed out. In addition, when you find where it was set to rotate the screen, also look in the same area for defined keystroke
macros that come with this settings to rotate the screen using keyboard. You may want to make sure that the keyboard macro is not too simple such as ALT-R or
CTR-R. Most can be changed or removed. If you do change, use more complex keyboard macro such as ALT-CTR-R "

"Sounds like the legendary "Intel on-board video problem. Go to display properties -> advanced, and disable auto rotation. "

"The Video adapter's software will have an option to rotate the screen back to normal viewing. Most Video adapter's software will have an icon in the System Notification tray to launch the program's user interface. You /may/ even be able to right-click this icon to rotate the screen.

Of all the suggestions only the weak "Ctrl+Alt+UpArrow " was feasible, so I tried that and it worked. I have a lot to learn. Humility, for one thing.

Both the Big Beige Box and the laptop now display correctly on the 17" monitor; the laptop displays correctly on it's squashed LCD.

This would have been a bigger nightmare without a second machine adjacent to the first.

I'm happy.

And very grateful for your nudge in the right direction.

[Jezza]

Cor, now you have done it Chris, I am typing this backwards having just pressed Ctrl+Shift+I + N and this happened!!

[chrisgreaves]

There you go, 2 180s, one of them internal.

[Caesar3]

I had a somewhat similar experience recently. In my case, an accident proved quite beneficial.

Just days earlier, I'd gotten something I'd longed for: a dual monitor setup! My first, and I was thrilled! It was almost quitting time when I attempted a keyboard shortcut. I don't remember what I intended to do, but I accidently pressed Ctrl+Alt+right arrow key. One of my monitor screens suddenly rotated 90 degrees right! My first response was to scramble about to return the screen to normal. I found that Ctrl+Alt+up arrow key set things right. Just then it hit me: Why not flip BOTH screens and rotate the physical monitors to portrait view. After all, most of my work is with MS-Outlook and MS-Word. Well, that's how I work now, and I couldn't be happier.

I even tried to show a colleague how to do the same thing. I can't be absolutely certain at this moment that we both have identical computers, but we do have identical Dell flat-screen 19-in monitors and Dell laptop computers set in identical docking stations. I instructed the colleague to use the keyboard shortcut, but nothing happened. The screen didn't even blink. Ours is a corporate workplace, with a very buttoned-down and fairly uniform hardware and absolutely uniform software setup. Any ideas why our systems behave differently? What should I look for?

[HansV]

Whether the desktop can be rotated, and if so which hotkeys are used for it, depends on the video card/drivers, not on the monitor. The settings can usually be found as follows:
- Open the Display Properties control panel
- Activate the Settings tab.
- Click Advanced.
- The resulting dialog usually has a tab specific to the video card/driver. The settings should be somewhere in there.

[chrisgreaves]

C3> Ours is a corporate workplace, with a very buttoned-down and fairly uniform hardware and absolutely uniform software setup. Any ideas why our systems behave differently? What should I look for?

I hope that Hans's response is of more help than mine. I am not experienced in monitor matters.
I'll comment on "uniform", though: I too am working for a client with 400+ workstations, identical images (hah hah!) which should behave consistently, but don't. Time and time again I am able to demonstrate that the systems are inconsistent.

My first "proof" came shortly before one of the tech guys discovered that one machine had Automatic Updates turned off, and was in effect a version of Windows circa 1723.
Now I go only so far in implementing my stuff, then stop and suggest that the machine be "rebuilt".