swoo

hey guys,

i just bought a samsung P931BW 19" widescreen monitor and connected it to my laptop via VGA cable to run a dual screen setup.

my laptop is HP dv2418.

two things bothering me right now:

1. when it's connected to my laptop, the monitor flickers. sometimes it's mild, sometimes it's pretty bad, i've tried connecting other people's laptops to it, ones with much better graphics cards, and with theirs, it was fine..
so, i think this means that it's not a monitor issue, nor the cable..

is there a way i can eliminate or at least tone it down somehow?

2. everytime I change the settings back and forth like this..
- dual screen (monitor as main screen, laptop as secondary) to
- single screen (just laptop running) back to
- dual screen (monitor as main screen, laptop as secondary)..

the monitor resolution changes to 1280 x something, (but it's not even widescreen) so, half of the start menu doesn't even fit on the screen..

is there a way to set the 1440 x 900 as default so everytime i reconnect, it'll just stay at that resolution?

thanks in advance!
-swoo.