laptop docking - dual monitor issue

Hi all,

I have a Dell Laptop (vista certified) running Vista ultimate edition. I
dock this laptop into a docking station and have a monitor and bluetooth
keyboard/mouse. My laptop is to the left of my monitor. I have the monitor
set as the main monitor and laptop display as secondary. The problem is
everytime the OS enters screen saver mode it loses this setting. I have to
manually re-set the monitor as my main display.

Please advise.

[DellCA]

While I am not 100% sure of this, as I have not had a chance to really
sit down and play with a notebook running vista on a docking station,
it appears to be working as intended.

For a notebook computer the built in LCD panel should always be the
primary display device, even when docked. I am not sure why Vista
allows you to change them around, but under Windows XP you cannot do so
(I tested it at my desk with an Inspiron 640m running XP and an external
monitor). In my testing you can force the display to the external (or
internal) monitor using Fn+F8 or display on both at once
(cloned/duplicated or extended depending on the Windows/video card
display settings), but it will not allow you to change the internal LCD
to be the secondary display (the setting changes back as soon as you hit
OK).

My guess is that even though Vista is letting you set the external
display as the primary, when it goes into screensaver it does a sanity
check and automatically switches the internal display back to being the
primary.

If you had any other questions on this I will be happy to answer them.


Larry
Dell Customer Advocate


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DellCA