Dual Monitors on Windows

[john_deerfield]

<p>For the record I'm a Mac guy. And apparently with very good reason. I have two monitors hooked up to my MBP. In OSX and can arrange them and either use an extended desktop or a mirrored desktop. Previously when I booted to Win XP, my Windows desktop was mirrored. For my purposes, I need the XP desktop mirrored. I did however have a reason to extend my desktop in XP... only now, nothing I do will bring it back to mirrored? I am in the Display dialog box under settings. I can choose either monitor 1 (the laptop screen) or monitor 2 (a HP monitor). The #2 monitor is "greyed" out until I select extend my desktop.... in which case the desktop is extended. But how do I mirror it? Searching KB articles only told my how to extend it.</p>

<p>This isn't doing anything to encourage my use of Windows!</p>

[michael_young3]

<p>To my knowledge, XP does not clone the display, although Vista and Windows 7 do. The Nvidia control applet, however, provides that functionality at the driver level. Other cards or drivers might vary in their abilities. (Since you mention it, I'll mention it also: I personally couldn't care less whether you used Windows or something else. You'll have to look elsewhere for an apology.)</p>

 

[francisco_disilvestro]

<p>I think you need to toggle the display mode with the keyboard. This is usually in one of the special F keys on top of the keyboard (some models have it in the F7 key). You may have to press the Fn key in the bottom left.</p>

[richsimmons]

<p>You should check your video card driver. I've had problems with the GeForce cards in the past but you don't say anything about the laptop you are using, but generally, it hasn't been a problem. Have you tried just unhooking the 2nd monitor, rebooting with one and then adding it back in? Do what Francisco says first though, that's the easiest way to find out.</p>

[john_onderstall]

<p>Some great software for running two monitors is UltraMon. You can download it as a trial and see if it resolves your problem as you would be using that software to mirror instead of relying on windows to do the job.</p>

 

[brad_smith8]

<p>I did this regularly in XP, but I always did it via the video card driver dialogue (make sure you have the latest driver too).</p>

[john_deerfield]

<p>Thanks for the F7 tip. Although F7 has a symbol that looks like two monitors, hitting F7 or Fn +F7 doesn't doe anything for me. I am running Windows XP via a BootCamp partition on a Mac Book Pro. I am pretty sure the drive updates come from Apple (Radeon X1600). Dual displays work fine under OS X so I am a bit worried about updating the driver from within Windows and then throwing my OS X out of wack. I might look into UltraMon.... What is troubling is that I have had Windows in a mirrored display mode before because I teach a few classes, but for the life of me now, it won't work.</p>

[francisco_disilvestro]

<p>Another way to do it should be from the Display dialog, under Settings. Select the monitor 1 (laptop screen) and then click on "advanced settings".<br>

You should get a dialog from the display driver that should have a tab for "screens". There you should be able to activate the external screen</p>

[brad_smith8]

<p>Yes this issue is likely caused by running XP via Bootcamp; it's not an issue with XP alone. If Bootcamp allows you to completely boot via XP, then XP driver updates shouldn't be a problem. You're likely running into a limitation of the default XP video drive.</p>

<p>But the laptop must have an ATI XP video driver to work. A full ATI driver install (from ATI) would not control video cooling properly, so the XP video driver must come from the laptop manufacturer (if available at all on a Mac).</p>