I changed my monitor to a Samsung 2220wm widescreen monitor
running at 1680 x 1050 with an NVIDIA Quadro FX1500 video card.
When i minimize Solidworks 2008 and then later try to restore I
lose the drawing portion of the screen. It just shows my desktop in
the drawing window. Then Solidworks freezes up and I have to
restart. I've upgraded the drivers and tried lower resolutions and
it still locks up. I had no problem with an old 19" Viewsonic
monitor prior to this. Any suggestions?
Run SwRx and run the diagonstics - look for things that don't have green check marks. I'd give the video driver the longest study.
Continue with SwRx and capture the problem - min/max your drawing and hope you can reproduce the problem quickly. If you can, fill out the problem description, package the files and send the log to your VAR.
If you can't easily reproduce the problem, try running SW08 in Software OpenGL. You can do this either thru SwRx or by Tools>Options>Performance and check Use Software OpenGL. You can only change this setting when SW has no files open.
Software OpenGL may slow down your system because it bypasses the video card's hardware drivers. If that fixes the problem, then you've got a driver or a something on the video card that's not too shiney.
If that still doesn't identify the problem, then we're into the long shots. Might be a power supply problem; make sure your PC has more than 350w. Maybe the monitor cable is sending junk to the card; switch cables between VGA/DVI perhaps. Try a different monitor driver Windows Generic vs. Samsung.
Is your PC set up with snooze mode? Screen savers? Any time based gizmos?