Laptop + Monitor -- How to?

Good morning... I've been stumped for sometime on this. Because I don't have a docking station here at work, when I come into work in the morning, I plug in my monitor in the back of my laptop before turning it on. After it boots, I normally have to press Fn+F3 to make the monitor my primary display.... What I'd like to do, is somehow turn on the laptop, close the lid and have the monitor automatically display the desktop .....because of space, I'd rather have my laptop closed with my primary display being the monitor...Any ideas? Thanks in advance....

Laptop - AW Area-51 M9750 w/dual 7950's configured with 179.13 drivers....

 

*** edited. Misread post. No docking station****



If you go to display properties. With lid open and monitor plugged in.
Enable the dual display option but select mirror display. This way the monitor and notebook display the exact same thing. It should remember your preference. So from then on, it should default to your settings. This way you can close the lid after boot and it will still show the display on the external monitor.


Its strange though... On my notebooks it has automatically switched for me in the past. As long as I booted with the device attached already... If I hooked up after boot I would have to do the function key.

What operating system?

 

Have you tried doing just what you specified in the post? Because when I had my m15x (I can't remember which drivers I was using, sorry) on dual monitors, it would automatically switch when I closed the lid.

 

Thanks for the reply... I'm using WinXP w/sp3 .....

The odd thing is that if I have the lid open and I do the Fn+F3 and then close the lid, go figure .. the comptuer goes into stand-by .....

I'll try the dual display option, but i'd hate to have the lid closed with the LCD on ........

 

Go to power options. Turn off the "standby when lid closes" option in whatever power mode you are using. The LCD shouldn't stay "on" when the lid is closed because there should be a switch that turns it off when the lid is at like a 5-10 deg. angle. Hope that helps (if that's what you meant).

 

Yes. this is a must if you want to run the computer with the lid closed without a docking station.


Most notebooks have a trigger that turns off the display when closed up.

The nice thing is you can disable the standby when plugged into the wall when lid closed but when on battery to enter standby. Its your choice.

 

W00t! cookies all around .... that did the trick .. Thanks guys ..... now about the Nvidia control panel not displaying the Performance tab ......

 

Awesome!

Are all the drivers installed properly? Sorry I am not home on an nvidia system to test.. crappy integrated video on my work notebook.

Usually when panels have disappeared for me it was due to the driver not installing right or the additional software for NVidia.

 

I sure hope so .... Over the last few days, I've been trying to find compatiable drivers for the 7950's and the AW forums are non-supportive imo... the only drivers avail for us atm is 179.13 (BETA) which I'm using... But when I was swapping out drivers, I would uninstall the drivers, reboot, use drive cleaner , reboot and then re-install ..... oddly enough no performance / system options in the CP... I even re-installed the Nvidia System Tools which has the drivers for those... really weird...

 

I don't have that notebook, but I did see more recent ones on the NVidia site.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winxp_179.48_beta.html


Did you try these?

 

Try the laptopvideo2go drivers. 185.68 work fine on my system

 

Yup tried those beta's also and on 3DMark the 179.13's ran better....

Simon -- I just dloaded the DOX 185.68 drivers and ran the 3DMark on them as well... here are the results:

DOX 185.68 - 8481
175.28 (Beta) - 8720
179.13 (Beta) - 9128