Problems with display on external monitor?

angelfire

Hello,

I was on here last week and got some fantastic advice from people on here regarding my dell desktop - that issue still isn't resolved, it's a long story but suffice to say I'm not very happy with dell's Customer Service.

Anyway,

Whilst I am without my desktop, I have been attempting to set up my laptop that has a broken screen to an external monitor. The problem I'm having is that when I plug in the monitor, the background picture comes up on the external monitor's display, but without any icons or mouse cursor. The full display appears on the laptop's broken screen, so using this I have been able to mess about with the settings but to no avail.

I have tried booting into safe mode and when I do this, the whole picture, icons and all, DOES display on the external monitor? It's quite strange...

I should also add at this point (don't know if it makes a difference), but I have also had to re-install XP onto this machine as we had forgotten the password. Could this have something to do with it?

Thanks in advance!

espresso

It sounds like you need to adjust the resolution to suit the monitor. Right click anywhere on the desktop, then Properties, then Settings tab. What is the screen resolution set to? Try moving the slider.

angelfire

espresso wrote: »

It sounds like you need to adjust the resolution to suit the monitor. Right click anywhere on the desktop, then Properties, then Settings tab. What is the screen resolution set to? Try moving the slider.

Hi, I've tried changing the settings but this hasn't worked. Some research has just highlighted the fact that it may be due to my laptop initiating the 'dualview' function. This basically means it's using the external monitor as an extra view, rather than cloning the view on the laptop monitor. I'm just not sure how to turn off this dual view?!

espresso

!!!!!! wrote: »

Hi, I've tried changing the settings but this hasn't worked. Some research has just highlighted the fact that it may be due to my laptop initiating the 'dualview' function. This basically means it's using the external monitor as an extra view, rather than cloning the view on the laptop monitor. I'm just not sure how to turn off this dual view?!

Well you have given zero information about the laptop or the monitor but when a computer boots up into safe mode the resolution is a much lower setting. Usually the output to external display is switched by a function key combination.

vaio

Laptops tend to have three settings for display, laptop only, external only or both

You need to set it to set it to external only. How to do this depends on your laptop, on my sony it’s Fn & F7 which cycles through the three options. It was similar on my last one which was a tosh.

Time to dig out the instruction book