P-7805u FX & External LCD Monitor

When at home (I travel a lot for work and take my laptop with me), I have my P-7805u FX laptop hooked-up to a Gateway FHD-2400 LCD widescreen monitor via an HDMI cable. That combination works great, except for 1 problem - when I restart my PC, there is no image displayed on the external monitor until Windows starts. In other words, when I turn the laptop on or restart it, the Gateway logo on the screen that says to press F2 to enter the BIOS does not appear, nor does the screen that says Windows is starting (the screen that shows the animated Windows logo). It's as if the external monitor out (via the HDMI connection) does not function until a driver is loaded to enable the HDMI connection (is that what's happening)?!!

I previously had a P-6864 FX laptop that did not behave this way; it showed the boot screen and the Windows start-up screen on the monitor right from the get-go! Is that because that laptop had an ATI video card and the P-7805u FX has an nVidia card? Is the P-7805u FX behaving normally, as it should be? Is there something I can change to allow it to display the Gateway and Windows start-up screens or is that not possible?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Dennis

 

Its the same for me too. I too feel that the display on the LCD starts only after the required hdmi drivers are loaded.

 

I think if you close the lid on the laptop, you'll get the initial display on the HDMI port. It's been a while since I've had my HDMI based monitor hooked up to my laptop though, so my memory's a little fuzzy.

I had a USB keyboard and mouse hooked up at the same time, so I would start the laptop and close the lid.

Again, my memory's fuzzy about this one. Try that and see if it works that way. I think it's a matter of what gets initialized first. I know on Thinkpads you can change what gets initialized first, but I don't think we can on our Gateway 7805's.