having problems hooking up desktop monitor to my laptop...

[iSign]

I'm having problems hooking up desktop monitor to my widescreen laptop...

I just got a laptop for a recent trip, & I want to use it in my home office.
Currently I use an older tower & have a small HD TV hooked up as the monitor, along with a standard keyboard and mouse.

The laptop is a decent machine & will be everything the desktop was and more (not to mention portability) so, if I can sit in front of the same keyboard mouse and monitor, it's an improved situation that also lightens the load on my desk.

Here's all I know so far... I've never done this before, but I started by just trying my luck plugging in the USB keyboard and mouse, along with the monitor.

It started out good, because the keyboard & mouse were recognized & working immediately, as expected. The monitor started showing the startup screen for Windows Vista, so I was thinking i was getting off easy, with no troubleshooting to be done... then the circular windows Vista logo display came up as usual on the widescreen laptop, but on the 3:4 ratio external monitor it showed up distorted. I figured that would be easy to remedy, and it still might be... but then another problem surfaced a few minutes later.

There was some dual monitor wizard or something that popped up on it's own & seemed to be ready to give me independant controls for display settings on the 2 monitors, but not only did this box confuse me before I could find the proper settings... then, the external display went blank.

I've restarted the laptop twice, & both times, the second monitor is recognized easily... but then it goes blank & then green power light goes amber like it does usually when I shut down the desktop computer that I usually use that monitor for. If I power it on with the TV remote (remember, it's a TV too) ...it pops up with a "NO SIGNAL-VGA SIGNAL OUT CHECK CABLE" message. I guess it's kind of like the laptop is sending out information initially, but based on some incorrect settings, or some failure on my part to correct some settings quickly... it discontinues sending a signal.

Anybody have any ideas or experience with this issue?

Also, I guess it's normal that the laptop monitor port is a female 15 pin port, just like my desktop CPU.
My HD TV does not have a built-in cable, but it also has a female 15 pin port. I have a monitor cable with Male 14 pin configuration on both ends (which looks like a matching 15 pin configuration, missing one pin... which I guess is normal, because I have another male/female one that's the same on the male end)

 

[Pro Image]

Sorry Doug I don't know a damn thing about Vista........You might want to check the compatibility of the monitor with Vista.........I heard all the nightmares that people are having with it............

 

[iSign]

Thanks Dustin, I'll look into it. I bought the laptop for a trip & I had located a Refurbished Intel Dual core Sony Vaio running XP for $650 which I was thrilled about... but the f'n loser sales dumass told me it was shipping out the next day. 3 days of phone calls after a no-show on the projected delivery date... I finally found out it was on back order. By that time it was too late to find a refurbished Dell running XP... so I was forced to get this damn HP laptop running Vista.

I did have my share of nightmares with it, including an entire Saturday wasted deleting the c partition, loading XP... dl'ing drivers, finding out the monitor would never be compatible with XP... and having to restore Vista. I also had about a 4 hour download of the Omega patch to run Omega on Vista, but got that working along with the other vista based issues I had initially.

At this point it works well, & I consider it a valuable training grounds for me & Vista, away from the main office demands on efficiency & predictability. I figure Vista & me will have to get along eventually... so I'm starting out in the less stressful environment of my home office.

Actually, on this current issue, I'm guessing it is something less involved then a Vista issue. But that's just my guess because I've never done this before & I expected problems because of that.

 

[iSign]

what... nobody knows anything about hooking a monitor to a laptop??

I thought tons of people have done this before me??

Has anyone reading this done it?
How did it go for you?
do both monitors display, or do you have to pick one???

 

[iSign]

so, this is what I learned.
the default setting is for either one monitor or the other, which is what I had in mind. Otherwise I could go for the "dual" setting where I can drag pallettes and toolbars to another monitor, but for now I just wanted the desktop (TV) monitor to work.

What was happening when it went blank was the system was choosing the laptop as the primary. The F4 key is the monitor selection key. It will toggle the display from one to the other.

So, now it's all working right

I cleaned out a bunch of stuff from my desk shelves and drawers, because I have a small house, & I decided to make some room by downsizing my desk.
I shot this pic so I can put a url in the free paper for buyers to check it out.
This is the current set-up, but the CPU is returning to the office with me in the morning. I have a 66" x 30" desk I will replace this one with if I can sell it.

 

[iSign]

orbs!!

Jill...
are you out there?
I know you have posted about mysterious orbs in photos before...

well, I shot 2 pics 10 seconds (or less) apart... one without & one with a flash. There is an orb behind one arm of my green monkey critter, but only in the flash shot. There is nothing behind the blind that reflects light... nothing round, in fact nothing at all... so I guess this qualifies as mysterious :

Thought you might be interested:

 

[grafxxx]

i know everything is working for you know but if you hooked up the monitor to the lab top if you right click on the destop it should give you a graphic options or graphics properties to set up your monitors. im using a dell laptop running xp thou.