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How to set up 2nd monitor?

Peter Mendelson

New member
My parents just gave me their old Viewsonic VA720 monitor, and I would like to set it up to use as my second monitor with my Planar PX191 monitor. My video card has both a DVI and VGA inputs, so I plugged the Viewsonic into the VGA input while leaving the Planar plugged into the DVI input.

How do I actually set up the second monitor so I can use Photoshop tools on it and leave the main monitor for just the photo? I am running Windows XP, have an Nvidia Gforce FX 5500 video card, and also use a Wacom 6x8 tablet. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I did not see anything in the control panel which would let me do this - all I see are the settings for my original monitor.

Thanks,

Peter
 

David Bostock

New member
Peter, here are a couple of thoughts...

First, here's a link to a Microsoft article that might help: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/moredone/twomonitors.mspx

I had heard when XP Home Edition first came out it didn't support dual monitors, you had to have the Professional version. I've looked around Microsoft's site and don't see that limitation anymore so maybe they fixed it...

One thing you can do is check to make sure the video card supports dual monitors...you can do this easily enough by right clicking on your desktop/wallpaper and select Properties. Then go to the Settings Tab. If your card supports dual monitors, then you should see two monitor representations in the gray box at the top. Also, the Display dropdown should show two selections when you open it...if it doesn't then the card or your device driver aren't configured to support two monitors...

That's about all I can help you with remotely...let us know how it goes...

Cheers,
 

mburke911

New member
Hello,
From what I know of the card you have it is dual monitor capable. You might have the resolution set above the second monitor. Right clicking on your desktop/wallpaper and select Properties. Then go to the Settings Tab. Click advanced. You should have a "Gforce FX 5500" tab. There should be a nVidia Display Mode: (with a drop down, probably set to "single Display" ). Change it to "dualView". Another box will appear beneath the first with "primary display" and "Secondary Display". Select the correct order option (note 1 is the left monitor). Make sure you choose a primary display as well (1 should be the default but I remember having to mess with it on my system). I have a nVidia Quatro so the interface should be very close. If you don't have this interface you might want to go to Nvida's website and download the latest drivers.

I hope that helps.



Mark
 

John_Nevill

New member
Just a quick note for those of us who use dual monitors in a windows colour managed workflow.

You will need a graphics card with dual head capability (two chips) rather than dual ouput. This will allow you to load separate ICC profiles for each monitor. If the monitors are the same, then you can get away with using one ICC profile (assuming the colour characteristcs are identical).

However, to get round the problem post boot (windows), There's a nice utility which comes with gretag/eye one software called displayprofile. It enables you to load ICC profiles on the fly, just drag the app to the monitor and load the corresponding profile.

The only downside is that some RAW converters and other apps only read the default window profile. For example, I use RSP on a 2nd monitor (its not officialy support), with one ICC profile set for both monitors. If I set an independant ICC profile for each monitor then the output colour conversion is wrong.

I hope this makes sense!
 
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