Adding another monitor?

[Ganty]

Im using vista and have been using one monitor for about a year, just bought another.. my graphics card is a GeForce 9800GT, it has the two ports and i have the adapters.

Both monitors are plugged in and get get power however the second monitor turns on etc, but just goes straight into power saving mode like it does when the pc is not turned on.

Any ideas what i have to do/update for this to work?

Thanks

 

[Darren S]

Are both monitors the same'ish size? Sounds like the 1st monitor has a higher resolution than the 2nd one can support and simply drops into sleep mode.

I have a 26" monitor and a small 15" off to the side. The maximum the 26" screen will run at is 1920x1200 which it's currently set to. The small 15" max's out at 1024x768 - lol.

Try dropping your 1st monitor to 1024x768 and restart the PC. See if the 2nd screen kicks in then.

D.

 

[Krispwee]

Might also need enabling in display properties. My nVidia cards have always had a habit of making you do this first time another monitor is plugged in

 

[Ganty]

Yeah, my primary monitor is 21" and the second one is a 17" one, ill give them a try. How would i go about "enabling it" ive had a look, cant seem to find much tho.

 

[Sarah]

right click on screen and properties

you will see a big 1 and 2 should be able to adjust from there

 

[Krispwee]

Right click desktop -> Personalise -> Bottom of list is Display Settings -> Highlight the monitor 2 which is probably grey'd out -> Tick "Extend the desktop onto this monitor" -> Click OK -> Enjoy dual screen goodness!

Theres a way of doing it through the nvidia control panel aswell, right click desktop and first option should be Nvidia Control Panel or something of that effect. One of the options on the left hand side should be multi monitor. Not on my PC at the moment so can't say the exact details

 

[Ganty]

done it, thanks very much guys

 

[conneh]

22" for gaming, 32" for movies! Sorted

 

[Ganty]

right, next question
i basically wanted this so that i can use the 21" for gaming and my 17" for talking to people without having to minimize. However, when i am playing a game, the cursor doesnt move across to the other screen i can only view it.

Any way of sorting this without putting the game in windows mode, as it lags in windows mode for some reason

 

[Krispwee]

I've never been able to figure out if its doable or not. Annoying as wanting to chat on IRC whilst playing games meant alt-tabbing anyway

Another thing is give Ultramon which gives you more things to do in multimonitor mode. You can have another taskbar on the 2nd monitor which is nice and also the screensaver goes into dualscreen.

 

[Gareth]

^ yep, can't be done. Ultramon makes things better but you still can't control the 2nd screen whilst playing games etc.

 

[Ganty]

ah right thanks, kinda sucks thanks anyway though!