Dual Screen
 

Hi, would anyone know how to set up a computer to make use of 2 moniters? My video card is conflicting with the on-board memory and I hear that this may solve the problem. I'm running Windows XP Pro.

Thanks

I dunno about the conflict but the easiest way to is to right-click on the desktop and go to Properties, then Settings, then Advanced, then Monitor.

The solution depends on your machine / video card. On my dell the built on the MB video can not be used, when there is a video card installed in the system, so I hooked both displays to my video card (needed to buy an adapter for the second display to use the digital output)

if you are trying to use the on-board video card and your video card together, it will most likely NOT work. They do not behave properly together as you usually have to disable the onboard to get the PCI/AGP card to work.

also it is nearly imposible to get an ati card to play nice with any other card.

if you have a dula head ati card you are in good shape, they are easy to set up. let me know if you have a dual head ati card and ill walk you through.

Yeah, that's the plan. I'm having trouble disabling my on-board video, which is conflicting with my video card. I'm trying to make use of a GeForce 4 PCI card.

Any ideas?

Go into your BIOS, there should be an option about "onboard VGA" or something along those lines. It will probably be located near the enable/disable options for any other onboard devices. For example, on one of my servers, there's a section of the BIOS that lists:
"Onboard LAN: enable/disable
Onboard VGA: enable/disable"

What's a dual head ATI card?

A dual head card is one with both VGA and DVI outputs (or two VGA or two DVI) that lets you connect two monitors to the same card. A dual head ATI card is a dual head card made by ATI ;)

justa bout all ati (and nvida) cards have dual heads and support them at the same time. assuming you have an agp slot, a radeon 9600 would do nicely.

D'oh, I knew that, I swear... we've got a dual head card on the family computer! I've just never heard it called that before.

Nope. The closest I have is "Onboard Video Memory: 512K/1M. On the far right of the screen, it explains the options available: 512k or memory or 1M. And under that, it says "Select Disable Onboard Video Memory", but unless there is some secret button or command, I can't choose that option.