Alienware 17 3D Vision laptop with Kepler GPU (GTX 770M) the stereoscopic mode is always enabled on the desktop

[kurkosdr]

Hi there,

I recently upgraded my Alienware 17 3D Vision laptop (which has a Kepler card - GTX 770M) to Windows 10 (latest version). I used to run Windows 8.1 before.

On Windows 10 I have this one big problem:

When stereoscopic 3D feature is enabled (from the Nvidia Control Panel or 3D Fix Manager), the stereoscopic mode is always enabled on the desktop.

I don't get a depth effect obviously, but the stereoscopic mode is always on (the screen goes darker as it does when going into stereoscopic mode in Alienware laptops). And I do mean it's always on: When no apps are running (and only the desktop is showing), when notepad is running, always. It's not app-specific. Ctrl+T doesn't do anything. Back in Windows 8.1, the screen would go into stereoscopic mode only if it detected a Direct 3D 9/10/11 application running, which is the reasonable thing to expect.

This causes the following problems:
- Games with full-screen optimizations disabled don't cleanly exit to desktop, they exit to a black screen and the PC goes unresponsive to any input immediately afterwards (not even ctrl-alt-del or ctrl-shift-esc works). I temporarily fixed this by making the power button shutdown the system (instead of putting it to sleep) from the Windows power settings, so at least I will get a clean shutdown by pressing the power button
- The 3dtv.at Stereoscopic Player doesn't work unless you disable full-screen optimizations, and even then the depth effect only works in full-screen. This means that I have to shutdown my laptop after I am done watching one stereoscopic video due to the issue mentioned above. Mysteriously 3D Photo Viewer doesn't need full-screen optimizations disabled so it doesn't have this issue.

So, my question is: Is this normal? Does anyone have the same problem of stereoscopic mode being always enabled on the desktop?

Please help me, I have no clue if this behaviour is expected in Windows 10 and whether a fix exists or not, I was happily living on Windows 8.1 until last week.

Couple of extra notes:
- The highest drivers available for my system are 425.31, so no driver downgrade is required (and 3D Fix Manager didn't recommend one).
- I cannot upgrade the GPU to anything higher than Kepler because the 3D Vision-supported cards are whitelisted in the Alienware BIOS/EFI with no way to bypass this restriction, and Kepler is the last GPU architecture supported/whitelisted. Generally, there are no 3D Vision latops with GPUs higher than Kepler. And I already have another Alienware 17 3D Vision laptop with an 880M if I want to experience peak Kepler, so please no "just upgrade mate" comments.

[kurkosdr]

Partially answering my own question in case some other unfortunate soul sees this:

To partially fix the problem with "app exits to a black screen and the PC goes unresponsive to any input immediately afterwards", you have to go to Settings -> System -> Display -> Advanced Display Settings and make sure it's set to 59.992Hz or 59.997Hz or 60Hz (whichever number close to 60Hz is available basically) when the stereoscopic 3D feature is enabled in the Nvidia Control panel and (here is the crucial part) also when the stereoscopic 3D feature is disabled in the Nvidia Control panel. Go to this settings screen twice to check in both situations.

This doesn't fix the "stereoscopic mode is always enabled on the desktop which is ridiculous" problem nor does it completely resolve the issue (some apps will still exit to black unresponsive screen), but at least it works for 3dtv.at stereoscopic player so at least I won't have to shut down my PC to change between videos.

PS: And don't get me started about how the refresh rate is now considered an advanced setting...

[3DNovice]

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[kurkosdr]

Perhaps try using Nvidia Inspector to delete the Microsoft Internet Explorer, Edge and Cortana profiles as needed

I did, no dice. But your rationale is the most logical assumption: Something in the Windows desktop is triggering stereoscopic mode. My problem is, I don't know what, and it's driving me nuts. I find it weird that we don't have a way to tell which apps have triggered stereoscopic mode. So now I have to enable stereoscopic 3d from the Control Panel every time I want to use a Stereoscopic player, Photo viewer or play a stereoscopic game and disable it afterwards to get normal screen brightness.

On W10, some dx9 games tend to hang 3DVision in stereoscopic mode, AFAIK, a reboot is the only solution, absent unplugging the emitter.

It also happens in Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit (the 2010 Criterion remake), so it's not only on dx9. I cannot unplug the emitter because it's integrated in the laptop. The solution I found is to reset the GPU with Win-Shift-Ctrl-B after I exit the game/app. Not ideal, but it has worked every time so far.

If your laptop has Optimus, I would think that you could assign the Microsoft stuff to the integrated CPU graphics and that would solve the issue.

No Optimus present, the LCD and HDMI are connected directly to the Nvidia GPU via eDP, and Alienware has taken great care to disable the Intel GPU at the BIOS/EFI level for stereoscopic laptops. There is no Intel GPU anywhere in Device Manager and pressing the GPU switch button shows a pop-up window saying "your graphics solution is automatically configured for optimal performance". Display resolution etc is changed via the Nvidia Control Panel, because there are no Intel drivers and no Intel control panel.

Also, perhaps a driver re-install using DDU will solve the issue.

Did it, no dice.

[Manolina]

there is currently no way to determine which programs have activated stereoscopic mode. This means I have to go into the Settings menu every time to turn on stereoscopic 3D.

[3DNovice]

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[a31632]

My suggestion would be to clean install Windows 10 on the laptop.
I still have the same laptop, Alienware 17 with Windows 10 installed and 3D Vision on 425.31 drivers and I don’t have any issues that you describe. Could be that the upgrade messed things up as it is not typical that this occurs

[hazelgowan]

Thanks for your advice. I will try it out.

[kurkosdr]

I tried that on a clean-installed system (with an 880m this time), and it's the same issue. You enable stereoscopic 3D and the screen goes into 3D mode (screen goes darker etc) even when only the desktop is running. Will post a video when I have time.

I am on the latest "mainline" Windows 10 btw, not 1809.

[3DNovice]

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