How to set dual monitor in vista

Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Asked 12 years, 10 months ago. Active 9 years, 9 months ago. Viewed 5k times. Right click on desktop Select Personalize in context menu Click display settings Click monitor 2, then click checkbox to "Extend desktop to this monitor" Click and drag monitor 2 to the left of monitor 1 Click OK to close the dialog Click Yes in the subsequent pop up to accept these monitor settings Update: Windows 7 does this automatically I just upgraded to Windows 7 and it remembered my dual monitor settings.

Improve this question. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. I've used UltraMon a while back. My goal is to automate the screen configuration, I'm not aware of a way to just run a program and have UltraMon automatically setup my monitors to a predetermined configuration. There's some clicking involved, right? Good point. Clicking around in ultramon, I don't see settings for configuring displays that way.

It does more in terms of window customization. Cosu Cosu. That might flip on a connected monitor, right? I'm not sure that's going to help with 5 in my list though: dragging the extra monitor to the left side of my laptop monitor. I think you could simply: plug in the second monitor select "enable secondary".

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Stack Gives Back Safety in numbers: crowdsourcing data on nefarious IP addresses. Featured on Meta. Once you've done this you can use your second monitor as is, but it's helpful to align it, and set the proper resolution. To align the second monitor in relation to the first one you just click and drag the "2" box until it's in approximately the correct position as related to where the monitors are actually sitting on your desk. This is important because when you actually want to use the second monitor you will need to physically drag the windows you want on it "off the edge" of one screen and "onto" the other.

It's easier to see, and do, then explain. Once you've done this click the "Apply" box and you'll be presented with one last dialog box asking if you want to keep the settings. If your screen goes blank and you see nothing then just wait for a minute and it'll come back. At this point you may also want to adjust the resolution of the second monitor to get it to look right. The trickiest part of the entire dual monitor setup is learning how to use it.

What we've done is enlarge the desktop and stretch it across two monitors. With mine setup as shown in the pictures, when I move my mouse to the far left side of the laptop monitor it will vanish from my laptop screen and immediately appear on the right side of the screen on the second monitor.

Basically, just pretend that you have one monitor and you've cut in half and it magically still works. When I maximize any window on my computer, though, it will fill the screen that it's on but not both. To help clear things up, take a look at the images. The first one is a screen capture with all of my windows minimized. The division that is seen is the border between the two monitors.

When I want to move between them I just move the mouse, or window, in the corresponding direction. In the second image I've brought up the instructables website on the right, another browser playing a video on the left, and a third window in between them. To see how this looks on the monitors just take a look at the last image. In conclusion, I hope this instructable has been helpful. I mainly want people that are using laptops, or wishing they had larger screens, to realize what a normal person can easily do to help make their lives easier.

I mainly use this to watch video on the second monitor while I do other things on the laptop LCD. This lets me do other things without having to resize windows to ridicules dimensions. I've only have this setup for a day and my computer handles it just fine although the second monitor does tend to flicker every once in a while due to age. Hope you've enjoyed and found this helpful and insightful!

Thanks for reading! You can also try this guide too!! Reply 7 years ago on Introduction. Reply 12 years ago on Introduction. This may sound like a stupid question, so please forgive me, but how do I check if my laptop has a graphics card with multiple outputs?

The only stupid question is the one not asked! Checking for a video output on your laptop isn't at all difficult. You'll be able to tell very easily be checking to see if there's a port on it that matches up with the monitor cable.

Basically, if the plug on the end of the monitor cord fits into one of the ports, then that's most likely the one you're looking for, Additionally, because most newer computers have the ports color coded, the one you're looking for will probably be blue. The image i've included is rather blurry, but the blue thing is the video output port on my laptop, and it's a 15 pin adapter.

Hope that helps! Seriously though,those gauges take a lot of space! Just did this, and it works! By patricksanford Follow. More by the author:. Did you make this project?