Why is my monitor showing up as "Generic Non-PnP Monitor"?
Solution 1:
Most of the credit for this answer goes to the user Facebook, who rightly guessed that it was a driver issue. In short, this issue is solved by replacing the generic driver for the monitor with the right driver for your monitor.
Replacing your monitor's driver with the manufacturer's
- Determine the manufacturer and model number of your monitor, and using this information, search for a driver for your monitor from the manufacturer's website.
You may have trouble with this, as monitor drivers can be incredibly obscure, and the manufacturer may not have provided any at all. For my AOC 2795E, the driver was found on the no-frills page here. If you do manage to find a driver, download it and remember where you downloaded it to.
- Open the Device Manager. Look for your monitor under Monitors, then right-click it and select Update Driver Software.
- Select Browse my computer for driver software, and point it to the folder that contains the drivers you downloaded from the manufacturer's website. Select Next, and wait for it to update your drivers.
Now find a picture, and open it in Windows Photo Viewer. If everything displays as expected, you're done. If you find that your photos now have an ugly yellow overlay to them, continue with the steps below.
Correcting a defective colour profile
The colour profile is what tells your monitor how it should render colour. If the colour profile that was included with the driver you just installed wasn't written as it should have been, it will behave defectively, causing Windows Photo Viewer to render colours incorrectly. This is easily solved by making use of one of the colour profiles that Windows ships with.
Open the Color Management window from the Start menu search.
Select your monitor from the dropdown menu, and check the box Use my settings for this device.
Click Add to add a new colour profile.
Select the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile, and click OK to add it.
With this new profile selected, click the Set as Default Profile button.
Your monitor is now making use of the manufacturer's driver along with a working colour profile, and Windows Photo Viewer should go back to rendering your photos normally.