Dual monitor problem question

A

Aaron1100us

New Member
The other day at work, I noticed a Dell computer with two LCD monitors hooked up to it. You could drag the mouse from one monitor over two the other one and have two seperate programs running on each monitor. I was checking it out to see how they had it set up. It looked like the stock Dell video card with a Y adaptor that each monitor was hooked up to. I thought you had to have two video cards or a special video card with two outputs. I was even told that by someone at Radioshack. So, I went to the local computer store and they had one of these VGA Y splitters. I went home, hooked it up to my Nvidia GeForce MX 420. My two monitors are a 17" gateway and a 15" compaq. Both monitors work but its the same thing on both monitors. I don't know how to get one cursor that will go from one monitor to the next. Under the display settings, I have monitor 1 as primary monitor, it also says Extend windows destop onto this monitor (won't let me uncheck this). On monitor 2, it says extend my winodws desktop onto this monitor. Under the Nvidia control, it lists both monitors but says display one, analog and display 2 TV. Doesn't give me any other choices for it but analog plus TV. Both monitors are checked as analog plus TV in the Nvidia settings under dual view. I can also choose vertical span, horizontal span, clone or single display under the Nvidia control. Thanks
 
when I select horixontal span, it makes the #1 monitor go to 2048x768 and I loose everything on the lower right hand side of the screen (nividia control). When I change it back to 1024x768, it just goes back to the way it was. no matter what I change, its the same thing on both monitors (so far). On the Nvidia control, when I change it to horizontal display, I loose the control for both monitors.
 
some screen shots
horizontal.jpg
 
Go to Nvidia Control Panel> Display Settings> Multi-Monitor Display settings or watever is says then select horizontal span.
 
When I go to Horizontal span for monitor 1, I have to choose analog + TV or TV + analog. Which one do I choose? When I do that, it gets rid of display 2. It also causes both screens to go widescreen and I loose everything in the lower right part of the screen where the clock/nvidia stuff is located. I go into display settings and change monitor 1 back to 1024x768 and it just goes back to the way it was. I obviously have no idea on what I'm doing. I thought windows XP did this automatically. I might have to check out the computer at work and see how it is set up more closely. No matter what I do, I still have two cursors, one on each screen.
 
After doing somg research, I found that some Dell computers come with a video card that can handle dual monitors, the Y cable comes with these supposedly. I also found out that cheap cards like mine will only let you see the same thing on both monitors while better cards will let you do two seperate things on the different monitors. I guess thats ok since I plan on upgrading the video card hopefully within the next month or two. I'm installing the latest driver just incase that does anything, if not, oh well. Thanks
 
Well the way I see it, the Y-cable you got, is just a simple split cable, therefor, the only thing you can do with it, is see the same images on both screens. The Y-cable for that dell you were speaking of, is probably not a standard y-cable.

Most modern video cards have two DVI plugs, or a DVI plug and VGA (you can get DVI to VGA adapter if you have two CRTs). Connect monitors to them, then it will work fine.
 
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