Chris 2006-10-10 05:49
I have a Dell laptop with a single external VGA ouptput. I am using the Matrox DualHead2Go to run two external displays from this laptop. Everything works fine, but when I close the laptop lid it wants to disable the laptop LCD and make the external monitor (it only thinks one exists because of the DualHead2Go) the primary VGA display with Start Bar. I want the external monitors to display the same thing whether the laptop is opened or closed. Anyone have any ideas how I could make this work?
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Al 2006-10-10 11:51
Physically disable the lid close switch. How to do this is highly dependent on the switch mechanism used in your specific notebook make and model, and up to you to figure out.
Since this will also mean the LCD screen will remain lit, go to ‘power options’ and set a ‘Turn off monitor’ time like 15 minutes or so. Though depending on type of computer activity occurring it may still not blank the screen. Not a big deal other than power consumption and screen/backlight life.
Maybe someone else will come a better solution or improvements to this.
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Al 2006-10-10 11:55
Oh and the ‘power options’ ‘Turn off monitor’ may turn off the external monitor too. This too may be dependent upon your notebook make and model.
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Chris 2006-10-11 06:55
Thanks AI. I was really hoping this could be found somewhere in the registry, but I've had no luck. I'm researching the lid close switch. Unlike my last laptop this one (Dell Latitude D810) doesn't seem to have a physical switch that gets pushed or moved by closing the lid. I'm going to remove the bezel around the LCD. I read that some Dell laptops use a magnetic switch to indicate that the lid is down. I'll post back what I find.
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Chris 2006-10-16 07:26
There was a magnet behind the bezel (the magnet is actually quite strong). It was glued in, but I scraped it out easily with a utility knife. There is a reed switch around the touch pad that gets activated as magnet in the lid bezel gets near. The good news is that if I want the old behavior back, I can just glue the magnet back in. Still would be nice to configure this via software.
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N3twork 2006-10-18 21:20
Easier then all those is to go into power options uner advanced there is a selection that shows. When I close the lid do the following... select Do nothing. You should be able to close the lid without any problems then... the only thing it should do is kill the LCD on the laptop but not stop any of the display ports from working.
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N3twork 2006-10-18 21:22
I should mention the only reason reason it would kill the lcd (it ddoens't disable the display or nothing it just cuts power to the LCD since it knows the lid is closed and you can't see it).
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Al 2006-10-19 10:14
That setting is for whether or not to hibernate or suspend when lid is closed. It does nothing with regard what the display does when lid is closed.
For instance, I have it set to "do nothing" when lid closed. But it switches the primary display to the external monitor.
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N3twork 2006-10-19 16:35
I just tryed it and your rigth sorry for my prior post... I didn't know it would affect ones display settings like this. I wonder if it would be possible to lock the display count via ultramon or other programming to prevent this from happening or if the action of closing the lid physically kills power to the on-board display controller for the lcd screen?
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