Hi,

i have the same problem and also using :
vista, dual dvi card, viewsonic monitor and toshiba lcd, 5 M cable to viewsonic, 5 m cable to lcd.

before all was fine until i changed to 19 viewsonic, tried my 19 monitor on differnet pc all is good! but the strange thing is that when i plug my ols 17 viewsonic back all is good!!.

ok, so i changed the vga card to a new one ( the old one was ex700pro of asus,ati ) to a 9600GT asus, still the same problem. maybe i should get a new cable but if then how it's working fine with my old monitor?!

it's drives me crazy, i can't think of a salution...

b

Heres what to do buddy.

Just right click on your desktop and then click properties next click settings click on the number 2 but make sure your leads are connected to that monitor. Then click the box extend my desktop to this monitor. It should now be working. In addition to that is a great free download called ultra mon and enables you to easily move stuff from one monitor to another setting up your own hot keys follow the link http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/download.asp

Same problem,
I've been running a Dell XPS420 since March '08 with a 24" Dell monitor for the main and a 22" dell monitor with a webcam for the secondary without issue. About a week ago my second monitor just stopped working, I was really busy at the time so I didn't pay a lot of attention to the problem (I don't know if it was after patch, etc. ). So yesterday I get some time and start looking.

There is nothing wrong with the second monitor, the built in mic works, the built in web-cam work but it will not 'see' the signal from the Dell desktop. I upgraded the video card, uninstalled and reinstalled the video card, none of that fixed the problem.

If you try to extend the desktop to the second monitor nothing happens, click apply and the extend checkbox becomes unchecked. I tried swapping the monitor cables but that didn't resolve the issue either. I'm pretty well stuck here. I didn't personally change anything on the computer (live alone), and I can't get it working again.

The 2nd monitor power buttons lights up, and I can switch between the 3 input modes without a problem and as I said the mic and webcam built into it works just fine.

Any suggestions?

Hi, I had a very similar problem, BUT I HAVE A SOLUTION. I have just updated my computer to a Toshiba Satellite Laptop and connected the laptop to a second screen. At the beginning I had both screens working just fine, and then the main monitor stopped working, and I only had the Vista Wallpaper displayed. I found out that I had "extended" the desktop from my laptop screen (Monitor 1) to my main screen (Monitor 2) through the "desktop properties" and I could drag items across etc, it was basically a physical extension of my desktop. No matter what I tried after in Properties, nothing worked.
As I did not want this, but to work mainly from my big monitor (Monitor 2), I was told I had to make Monitor 2 the main monitor.
By pressing the "FN" button on the bottom row of my laptop keyboard at the same time as the F5 button on the top, I could get another menu on the top where I could choose to make my monitor 2 the main monitor. And the problem was solved!
If you can find those 2 buttons to press (or something similar), you should be able to get a menu on the top of your laptop screen where you can change your monitor, and this should really fix the problem.
Let me know whether you guys had any success!
Unfortunately I am not a computer geek, so explaining this is a bit hard for me ;) Petra's� Internet� Marketing� Blog� 

I fixed it by going to Control panel/Personalization/Connect to a projector or other external display/
then click on connect display window and mark the first or last choose/
I had it on second one and i could only extend the monitors , but now its back to normal, i don`t know way it changed it self.

Hi all,

I have been having a similar problem - first of all, almost every time the computer reboots I have to go into the control panel and click on the INVIDIA icon and tell it that I want "The same on both displays". I think its under "setting up two displays".

I was trying to get the highest resolution on my flat panel TV and finally found a 1080p setting - I have an older flat panel monitor and a great new 34 inch Sanyo widescreen.

The problem is that if I use "the same on both displays" with the 1080P setting, the old monitor tells me that the input is too high of a resolution.

If I use "configure monitors separately" instead of "the same on both displays", I get an empty desktop background on the high definition!

Also, even with "the same on both displays", the screen doesn't FIT on the TV (it is hooked up with an HDMI cable). I am close to having it in REALLY high definition through the computer.

Now, the guide that i downloaded for the Media Center is two hours off - so guess what I did - I set the time on the computer back two hours! HA HA! It works great!

But I sure could use some help configuring the monitors separately?!?!?

If your using Nvidia go to control panel and add a resolution, the one you were previously using, windows forces resolutions which dont work, don't know about ATI should have sometime similar to make custom resolutions i hope. Mine was showing having 16-bit color instead of 32 and would stay blank changed that it worked fine. Its most likely not a hardware issue if they work somewhere else.

OK, my dual monitor setup stops a lot of times when Windows has an automatic update.
I'll turn on my computer in the morning, and one of the monitors will be dead.
Usually I can fix it by right clicking on the desktop. Going to the display settings and playing around in there for awhile.
This morning, no dice.
This worked for me...
(btw, I tried most of the other stuff on this board and none of it worked).
(btw...I have a Dell desktop I got 2 years ago with Windows Vista).

In playing around in the display settings, I realized that I had a Radeon video card.

The drivers and cards are made by AMD.
Their official driver download site is http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
It will ask you what version of windows you have (for me it was Vista home edition 32 bit).
My type of card of Radeon X1300 PRO.


As I was downloading the drivers, my monitors got fixed...
Good luck!