Dual Monitor w/ Laptop

[ekinike]

I wanted to use a dual monitor setup with my laptop, and had two LCD's with both DVI and VGA connectors. Since I only had one VGA connection on my laptop and no DVI, I used the VGA from my laptop and the DVI from the docking station to get both displays connected.

The problem now is that the display acts as one huge extended desktop, rather than two separate desktops. To clarify, I would like to be able to set a different background for each LCD and drag application windows between them, as would be the case if I were using a PCI video card with dual connections in a desktop. I am running Windows XP SP2.

Does anyone know how I can achieve this? Is there perhaps a PCMCIA card or some type of software or settings I am missing somewhere?

 

[kestrel1]

I dont think you will be able to do what you want using two external monitors as I expect that they are both using the same port. Can you use one external monitor & your laptops display for this purpose?
I may be wrong of course & I hope someone will say so if I am.

 

[Nelviticus]

What's actually happening at the moment? Are you saying that both monitors are displaying the same thing? I'm not sure what the difference between "one huge extended desktop" and "two separate desktops" is, they sound the same to me!

Anyway, if your hardware is capable of doing what you want then the answer to your question depends on what graphics driver you're using. I know that with nVidia drivers you can set two desktops to either "clone" mode (both the same output) or "dual view" mode (desktop spread across the two). You can do this through the nVidia control panel.

ATI can do the same but I've never used their control panel so I can't tell you what the settings are. They do have a good FAQ section on their web site though.

I assume that if you have Intel graphics you can also change the settings but again I don't know where.

I said at the beginning "if your hardware is capable of doing what you want" and that might be the stumbling block as the DVI port on your docking station may just be replicating the signal from the VGA port of the laptop, in which case you won't be able to get them to display different things.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[felixc]

Matrox sell a dongle that allows the conenction of two displayus to a laptop, along with software to drive the two displays correctly. Have a look at their web site to see if the software does what you need (two independent display contents).

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

I have an IBM laptop that is using the output of the laptop and of the docking station giving me 2 seperate displays. You need to set it up accordingly in XP, it gives you the choice of 1 big display or 2 small displays.

JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!