Cheap solution for half-broken video card.

[Jesster]

My main desktop/gaming computer doubles as a HTPC. Until recently, I've had it hooked up to both a 1080p lcd monitor and a digital projector on the two dvi ports on the GTX 275 card. Unfortunately, one of those two ports seems to have died, and I don't like having to dig back behind the system and swap cables on the one good port any time I want to watch stuff on the big screen (aka my wall).

At first, I figured one of these would do the trick: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001VLBARO/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00
After all, the monitor and the projector are both 1920x1080 native, and cloning the image should work fine. Unfortunately, I didn't count on Windows 7's over-zealous PnP monitor detection. I can get both displays working properly as long as they're both on, but if I turn either one off, I get nothing on the other one. If I could just hack Win7 to put out a constant 1920x1080 60 Hz signal and just ignore what PnP is telling it about what I have plugged in, it should work. However, that doesn't seem to be possible as far as I can tell.

I really don't want to buy a new video card right now, and switch boxes always seem so over-priced for what they do. Anyone have any other ideas on a cheap way I can fix this?

 

[Procyon12]

get an amplified one or you may run into problems. and yes you should be able to lock in your resolution. and you can buy a switch box for like $18 on monoprice.

 

[Jesster]

Searched monoprice, and didn't see any $18 dvi switch boxes, and the ones they do have are for multiple sources to one display, not one source to multiple displays like I need.

Also, are you sure about being able to lock in display settings on Windows 7? If so, how? All my investigation thus far leads me to believe that previous versions of Windows allowed you to do this , but Win7 does not.