Dual monitors blind

[metspitzer]

I have a Nividia 5500. I have my monitor as primary and TV as
secondary. The desktop does not display on my TV.

I think what I have done accidentally is to set the second display as
primary. I can't get the display on the TV so now I am blind.

When I boot to safe mode there is nothing to change.

How can I turn dual monitor off and have the display come back to my
monitor?

 

[John Doe]

I have a Nividia 5500. I have my monitor as primary and TV as
secondary. The desktop does not display on my TV.

I think what I have done accidentally is to set the second display
as primary. I can't get the display on the TV so now I am blind.

When I boot to safe mode there is nothing to change.

How can I turn dual monitor off and have the display come back to
my monitor?

Switch the cable? Reset the BIOS?

 

[John Doe]

I am using a VGA cable and a S Video cable.
I don't have onboard video.
How do you reset the BIOS?

Carefully. Better yet, just disable some video setting in the BIOS.

But first, unplug the S video cable and boot into Windows. See if that
works.

Good luck.

 

[Paul]

I should mention I am using XP.

Did anything good happen to the VGA display, when you unplug
the TV cable from the card ?

Did you set any Hot Keys in the Nvidia control panel ?
I can find mention of hot key capability, but cannot find
a list of what those keys might be. For example, on a laptop,
Fn + F8 might cause the card to cycle through the outputs.
I doubt very much a desktop binding would be the same.
Since I cannot find any good documentation for this,
I don't know if all the hotkeys have to be programmed by
the user, or there are some by default that are
active.

One Nvidia document, mentions some games interfere with hotkey
choices, and the Nvidia choice is unbound in that case. But you're
in the Windows desktop right now, so presumably that won't be
an issue.

I also tried a search on hot keys and the registry, but didn't
find anything to suggest where those hot key settings might be
stored.

I think my experience with driver uninstall and reinstall, is
any bogus settings don't get cleared. I once had a problem
with a display, and tried to clear it by "doing the driver
dance", but Windows continued to store the errant setting.
After a couple days of frustration, I reinstalled Windows,
and wadda ya know, it was fixed :-(

Paul

 

[metspitzer]

Carefully. Better yet, just disable some video setting in the BIOS.

But first, unplug the S video cable and boot into Windows. See if that
works.

Good luck.

--
Interested in making Windows and games obey your verbal commands?
Continuous command recognition (much easier than speech recognition)
can now be enabled using Naturally Speaking and freeware Dragonfly.
See (comp.lang.beta) for discussion.

I did a system restore. That is the way I fixed it last time that
happened.

You would think if I have managed to do it twice that someone else may
have done it once.

I wish for an easier way.

Thanks for your suggestions

 

[metspitzer]

Switch the cable? Reset the BIOS?

I am using a VGA cable and a S Video cable.
I don't have onboard video.
How do you reset the BIOS?

 

[John Doe]

....

I did a system restore. That is the way I fixed it last time
that happened.

You would think if I have managed to do it twice that someone else
may have done it once.

It is not that uncommon.

I wish for an easier way.

You mean like Harry Potter?

 

[metspitzer]

I am using a VGA cable and a S Video cable.
I don't have onboard video.
How do you reset the BIOS?

I should mention I am using XP.

 

[Michael Cecil]

I have a Nividia 5500. I have my monitor as primary and TV as
secondary. The desktop does not display on my TV.

I think what I have done accidentally is to set the second display as
primary. I can't get the display on the TV so now I am blind.

When I boot to safe mode there is nothing to change.

Try selecting VGA mode from the same menu next time.

 

[Mike Painter]

Try selecting VGA mode from the same menu next time.

You might also just unplug the TV and see if the card reverts to the only
available source.

 

[John Doe]

metspitzer wrote:
....

Did anything good happen to the VGA display, when you unplug
the TV cable from the card ?

Probably... or maybe it fried his brain.