i am trying to hook up 2 monitors to my laptop to have a 3 screen desktop. one monitor is connected via hdmi and the other through vga. i am running windows 7 64bit. on an alienware laptop. my graphics card is a nvidia geforce gxt660m. i can get 2 screens working although one flickers and randomly stops displaying then re displaying but that may be a monitor issue. my problem is my laptop display stays black like it is just projecting to the other 2 monitors. i go into the nvidia control panel and can move the 3 screens around and select my lap[top display but it is greyed out. what is going on? can i just not support 2 addditional monitors? what hardware or wire do i need? i only have the one hdmi and vga ports
setting up extended display with laptop
- Thread starter Zombotomy
- Start date
Solution
ronintexas
Judicious
- Dec 10, 2012
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Most laptops will support two external monitors, but when both are enabled, the laptop screen will be disabled. The only way to get a "third" monitor working with the laptops would be to get a USB to HDMI or USB to VGA adapter - and these do not work for gaming.
im not using it for gaming actually. which is good i am more of a console gamer. im making video games so i am using it for productivity reasons. so if i get usb to hdmi or usb to vga then it should work? i can have one large desktop across all 3 screens?
ronintexas
Judicious
- Dec 10, 2012
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That will work - if you are doing programming, MS-Word, MS Excel spreadsheets or something similar, they do an ok job. Any video, especially HD video - you may get "choppy" playback - and gaming is worse....
i ended up getting a usb to dvi-d connecter because they were out of usb to vga but it works perfect now thanks so much. one more question my desktop backround is the same picture repeated on each monitor, is there a way to stretch it across all 3 monitors?
ronintexas
Judicious
- Dec 10, 2012
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Windows 7 isn't as friendly with monitors - Windows 8 and Windows 10 do a better job. If all 3 monitors are the same resolution (i.e. 1920 x 1080), then you can multiply the length (in my example it would be 1920 X 3 = 5760 - so resolution would need to be 5760 X 1080) and find an image. You can also use a photo editor and "stitch" 3 images together to make a 5760 X 1080 image.
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