Extending your desktop (laptop & a monitor) 1

[NTFOOL]

I have a laptop docked in a docking station, the laptop runs windows 2000. I am attempting to use the lid of my laptop and a LCD monitor and extend my desktop across the two displays. I have done this on other laptop setups and it has been very straightforward but this time there is something wrong.
I can't get the display properties to show 2 displays or show the graphics of the 2 monitors. Normally to enable a setting like this I see a drop down box in Display Properties that indicates both displays. I simply select the 2nd display and check the box to extend my desktop to this display and it is done.

Any suggestions how to enable this second display ?

Is this perhaps much easier to do in Windows XP ?
Maybe I am confusing how easy this was before because it was on another OS.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[cyoung]

Dual-monitor support depends on the graphics drivers for your laptop supporting this.

 

[NTFOOL]

Sorry I should of made mention of the vid driver

My adaptor is an ATI Radeon Mobility X1300, my monitor is a 17' LCD by LG.

This same setup is on an other laptops and the display properties show 2 displays and extending the desktop is very easy to do not so on this Win2k laptop.

 

[xwb]

There is a function key (Use the Fn button) which either has two squares, one filled in or CRT/LCD. This is the screen selector. Pressing this Fn key with the CRT/LCD key will switch the display to

a) laptop only
b) ext monitor only
c) laptop and ext monitor

Just try sequencing through.

Another alternative: does your monitor have 2 or more inputs and are you on the correct input? The one I'm using has 4. Took tech support 15 minutes to figure it out. Nobody knew that there were buttons under the monitor.

 

[NTFOOL]

I am familiar with the toggling off/on of the function keys and that works exactly as described above. I can get both screens displaying the same desktop simultaneously and each monitor displaying the desktop alone, but can't get the extend you desktop option in display properties, it only ever shows one display instead of the Multiple monitors setting I usually see.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[CharlieJax]

Hello NTFOOL,

I have seen this issue a few times on some of the laptops we have here at work. Sometimes it is the driver (it is an older version) and others it is the ATI software. If you have the ATI icon down in the system tray you can click on it and see if you can activate the dual screen setup or you can try clicking on the desktop and selecting the display options.

Sometimes the ATI software gets a little too hands on and does not allow Windows to make the changes you want.

Hope that helps!

CJ

Don't drink and post, save that for driving home!

 

[NTFOOL]

Thanks for the reply CJ

I suspected it was a vid driver issue, perhaps I will remove and re-addd the driver.