Dual monitors possible?

[GPG]

Recently thinking it would be nice to run two monitors on my system, I've
got a problem (or two)

The motherboard is quite capable of running one of my displays. However,
when I plug my nVidia MX-400 64MB AGP card in, the mb video output seems to
be disabled. Is this normal?

When the nVidia is in use the, the control panel/display/display settings
shows a second display whose properties can be modified, but there does not
seem to be anywhere to plug a second monitor in to capture it. In any case,
it seems to believe that two monitors are connected to the nVidia card, one
as 'default monitor' The card has one VGA output and a small round thingy
which I know not how to connect to a monitor, supposing that to be possible
(both my monitors are BENQ T905's which can accept VGA or digital but
nothing else as far as I can see).

Hope that makes sense - I don't know all the correct terminology. Any
suggestions would be gratefully received.

I'm running XP Home

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User]

It is best to buy a dual head video card if you want two displays..

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Recently thinking it would be nice to run two monitors on my system, I've
got a problem (or two)

The motherboard is quite capable of running one of my displays. However,
when I plug my nVidia MX-400 64MB AGP card in, the mb video output seems
to
be disabled. Is this normal?

When the nVidia is in use the, the control panel/display/display settings
shows a second display whose properties can be modified, but there does
not
seem to be anywhere to plug a second monitor in to capture it. In any
case,
it seems to believe that two monitors are connected to the nVidia card,
one
as 'default monitor' The card has one VGA output and a small round thingy
which I know not how to connect to a monitor, supposing that to be
possible
(both my monitors are BENQ T905's which can accept VGA or digital but
nothing else as far as I can see).

Hope that makes sense - I don't know all the correct terminology. Any
suggestions would be gratefully received.

I'm running XP Home

The round connector is probably an S-Video adapter that will let you use
compatible displays, often TVs. Note that these aren't always
straightforward to set up. I have difficulty getting colour or an
acceptable resolution via S-video from this particular laptop.

The motherboard VGA connector may be disabled in the BIOS; you need to set
it to active and you will probably need to play with settings a bit.

Or, you could just get a dual-head display adapter that's made for running
two monitors.

And if the Display applet reads "default monitor", you haven't correctly
identified the monitor. A lot of the time, this doesn't make any
difference, but you might want to find the driver.

HTH
-pk