Hooking up my laptop to tv, only works with lid closed?

Ok, so I'm trying to hook up my laptop to my new 42" tv, so I can play games on the big screen. My laptop has a DVI, thing in the back, so I bought a cable that plugs into that DVI, and at the other end is a HDMI I plug into my tv.

But my problem is that the signal only switches over to the TV when the laptop lid is closed, so I cant get to my keyboard, I can only use my mouse. It does all work when the lid is closed, and the picture is great, I can browse the web, and click anything with my mouse, but I cant type anything since the lid on my laptop must be closed.

Once I open the lid back up on my laptop, the picture switches off on the TV, and goes back to my laptop monitor. Is there a way I can keep my laptop lid open, and have either both the TV & laptop display what I'm doing, or have the lid open and only have the TV display what I'm doing?

Thanks!

Oh and one more thing for sound. My surround sound system for my TV doesn't have an HDMI, but it does have a optical cable. My laptop has 4 jacks in the front. Heres a picture. The first one is SPDIF, the second is headphone jack, 3rd is microphone jack, and 4th is line in. I bought this cable that they told me I could plug into the optical jack on my surround sound system, and on the other end it got skinny and would plug into the SPDIF jack, and I would have surround sound. But it doesn't work. I pluged them both in, but I'm only getting sound from my laptop speakers, and not the surround sound system.

Any help?

 

Right click desktop/screen resolution/and enable both monitors (extend mode). There will be monitor 1 and 2 and you should be able to click the monitor and select the resolution separately.

If you want to display the same thing on both monitors, instead of extend, select duplicate.

For sound: right click the sound icon near the clock, click playback devices and change the default to spdif or something like that.

That's all assuming that you're running Windows 7, as you did not mention that detail.

 

Ok....neither of those worked lol

I am on windows vista 64 bit, not 7, maybe thats why.

But good news is I found out my first problem. And the way to get hook up my laptop to the tv without the lid being closed is to press Fn+F7 while the lid is open. That switches between either having both monitor and tv on, or just one or the other.

Now I just gotta find out how to get the sound to work

 

Most DVI will not pass through sound, so you'll have to hook up sound another way, the easiest way probably being through a jack from your headphone/speaker output on your notebook. Otherwise, you're likely to have to get a USB external soundcard/passthrough to get the right connectors to hook things up.