Monitor Control / Docking

I have a T61p and an Advanced Dock, and an external display, and I am having trouble understanding how to configure the displays. There seems to be four different ways to control monitor set-up:

1) NVidia's "NView Properties", available by right-clicking on the desktop.

2) NVidia's "Control Panel", also available through the desktop.

3) Thinkvantage's "Presentation Manager".

4) Windows standard "Display Properties", "Settings" through the desktop.

Which one of these has final control? All I want to do is set things up so that the internal display is used even when I am docked. I don't want the external monitor used unless I specifically set it up, as normally I only use the internal monitor. No matter which of these applications I use though, every time I come back the external monitor is selected. Presentation Manager seems like a smart app in that it accepts settings for both docked and undocked use, but it does not remember the settings it seems.

Thank you for any advice!

 

Just use the nVidia Control Panel.

Once you plug your external monitor in, go to 'Set up multiple displays'.

You'll know what to do from there.

 

Sorry, I was not clear. I have already tried the nVidia Control Panel as well as the other methods in my first post. None of those settings are sticky -- every time I dock my laptop it defaults to the external monitor, then I have to go and re-select the laptop display. I want the default to be the laptop display.

Thanks!

 

So when you're docking and you have your external monitor plugged into the port, it automatically goed to the external monitor instead of staying at the laptop display so you can adjust which monitor you want to use?

 

Try to go to BIOS and select default display. I think there is your problem. Last I was in bios and found that the default display is set VGA...
Change default display to Thinkpad LCD (I think it is called this).
I hope this help you.

 

Bingo! The BIOS was set to LCD+VGA. It is bizarre that the machine has so many high-level display selection methods and all of them are rendered useless by the BIOS. Too bad as PM seems useful otherwise.

Thanks guys!

 

I help if i can.