Using wide and regular format monitors

[Anthony Giorgianni]

Hello All

My job just gave me new Lenovo T400 laptop running XP. (No Windows 7 yet
for us)

It has a 14 inch wide format screen. I'm attaching the computer to a
traditional 20 inch screen. The wide display on the laptop 1280 x 800 is
squished and off the screen on the traditional montior. When I open display
properties, it shows both montiors as Monitor 1.

I'd like to have the traditional monitor work property without having to
resize the display resolution every time I connect to it. (I do NOT want to
use one monitor as an extension of my desktop). Is there a way to have two
different reoltuiosn - one to accommodate the laptop display and the other
my traditional 20-inch display? If I try to activate monitor 2 in the
display settings or even drag, it wants to extend my desktop. What, if
anything, am I missing here?

Thanks for any help.

Anthony Giorgianni

 

[thanatoid]

Hello All

My job just gave me new Lenovo T400 laptop running XP. (No
Windows 7 yet
for us)

It has a 14 inch wide format screen. I'm attaching the
computer to a traditional 20 inch screen. The wide display
on the laptop 1280 x 800 is squished and off the screen on

Go to the control panel or right-click on the desktop and go to
graphics properties. There will be a bunch of options depending
on your chip. Set it up the way you want for the laptop screen
and save it as a "scheme" (or whatever your software calls it).
Then connect the big monitor, set it up for THAT, and save it as
another "scheme". Then they will be easily accessible by right-
clicking the desktop and choosing the one you want.

Remember about refresh rates etc!

 

[Anthony Giorgianni]

Thanks for advice. Unfortunately, the highest selection I can get is the
laptop max at 1280 x 800. There's a tab for the monitor when it's connected,
but no option to change the resolution (which is 1280x1024) . The resolution
option only appears on the laptop tab.

I can change to a large size on Monitor 2, but there's no way to assign that
to the big monitor unless I extend my desktop to that one, which i don't
want to. Very odd.

Regards,
Anthony Giorgianni

For everyone's benefit, please post back to the group

 

[Paul Randall]

I'm guessing that you have your advanced monitor settings "Hide modes that
this monitor cannot display" setting checked. By unchecking this, I get a
multitude of screen resolution options up to double my monitor's actual
width and height. I don't know if this is unique to my ATI Radeon XPress
200M laptop driver, so your mileage may vary.

-Paul Randall

Thanks for advice. Unfortunately, the highest selection I can get is the
laptop max at 1280 x 800. There's a tab for the monitor when it's
connected,
but no option to change the resolution (which is 1280x1024) . The
resolution
option only appears on the laptop tab.

I can change to a large size on Monitor 2, but there's no way to assign
that
to the big monitor unless I extend my desktop to that one, which i don't
want to. Very odd.

Regards,
Anthony Giorgianni

For everyone's benefit, please post back to the group

 

[Anthony Giorgianni]

Thansk Pual. that did enable mroe setting. But ti turned out the problem was
I didn't turn off the laptop monitor - but I instead had both on, was was
causing me to a limited selection.

However, things still go off the page if I set my 20" monitor any higher
than 1024X768 (actually I can go two stops higher, but the aspect ratio
screws up. It's a mess if I go anywhere near the 1280 X 1024 native
resolution. So now I'm work with a fairly giant screen, and every time I
switch to the 20" monitor, I get a warning that 1024x768 is not optimal. But
I just can't go any higher without losing icons, parts of toollbars, etc.

Thanks.

Regards,
Anthony Giorgianni

For everyone's benefit, please post back to the group

I'm guessing that you have your advanced monitor settings "Hide modes that
this monitor cannot display" setting checked. By unchecking this, I get a
multitude of screen resolution options up to double my monitor's actual
width and height. I don't know if this is unique to my ATI Radeon XPress
200M laptop driver, so your mileage may vary.

-Paul Randall

 

[Anthony Giorgianni]

Thanks everybody. The solution was nothing more than setting 1290x1024 on
the extermal montior and pressing the auto refresh botton!!!! That last
thing was the missing part!

Regards,
Anthony Giorgianni

For everyone's benefit, please post back to the group