two monitors

[Miles]

Attempting to attach a 2nd monitor which is a Dell 21" LCD to the HP
laptop DM4-1060US. Using VGA connectors on both ends. HP doesn't
provide any written instructions about anything and when I purchased
this machine their tech service was worse than the top 3 tech services
combined! Two problems:

1) What is being seen on the laptop screen is about 3/4 screen size
and can't stretch it by pulling on the sides or enlarge with the
button on the upper right of the screen.

2) The monitor only shows the default Dell small window that moves
around, am not seeing what is on the laptop screen.

Any and all assistance would be appreciated.
Miles

 

[Paul]

Attempting to attach a 2nd monitor which is a Dell 21" LCD to the HP
laptop DM4-1060US. Using VGA connectors on both ends. HP doesn't
provide any written instructions about anything and when I purchased
this machine their tech service was worse than the top 3 tech services
combined! Two problems:

1) What is being seen on the laptop screen is about 3/4 screen size
and can't stretch it by pulling on the sides or enlarge with the button
on the upper right of the screen.

2) The monitor only shows the default Dell small window that moves
around, am not seeing what is on the laptop screen.

Any and all assistance would be appreciated.
Miles

You probably need to use the custom control panel that comes with
the graphics driver, to set up the monitor resolution.

The specs from the HP web site, say the laptop is probably using
integrated Intel graphics inside the processor itself, rather than
an external GPU on the motherboard. The reason I need this info,
is to get some idea what the custom control panel will look like.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...7163&cc=ad&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_r1002_usen

And the custom control panel, might have controls like the one in
this article. I don't have any Intel graphics here to verify.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/intel-hd-graphics_5.html

The FN-F5 key combo, may allow you to cycle through monitor configurations.
I don't know if that is a universal key combo, or only limited to
certain brands of graphics. That might alternate between internal
monitor only, external monitor only, clone mode, spanned mode, or the
like. But I think in my case, with my laptop plus an external 1440x900
monitor, I needed to touch up some settings in the custom control panel.

One other thing I discovered, is when the external monitor is disconnected,
all doesn't return to normal. Right now, Adobe Acrobat Reader preferences
panel, is "bigger than the screen", and I can't click the OK or Cancel
at the bottom of the screen. I think I already tried resetting things
in the custom control panel, to no avail. I'm just too lazy to
uninstall the Reader, clean out the registry, and install it again,
so I'll just leave it.

Paul