Hi all - I have Win7 running on a W700 and WinXP on a Z61p and have multiple monitors hooked up to both laptops. One of the monitors is the laptop screen itself and the other is a vanilla external monitor.

At times, I'd like to darken/turn off the laptop screen while leaving the external monitor on. Saves screen life a bit on my laptop...

So, any ideas how to do this? I poked around a bit and found some monitor utilities out on the web, such as MurGeeMon, but I don't think this one will do it, altho I didn't download it and try it(doc seemed to indicate nogo on laptop screen).

Any ideas how to do this? Some sort of Win7/WinXP bit I can flip?? I don't want to just physically close the laptop screen, as this shoves all of the open windows over to the external monitor and messes things up. I just want to darken the laptop screen.

You ought to be able to hit Fn-F7 to cycle through the available display modes (Laptop on, external off / both on / laptop off, external on), at least if they're like all the T-series machines I've ever owned.

Thanks. Good idea, but it doesn't work quite right. I can turn off the laptop screen via Fn-F7, but all open windows are shoved over to the external monitor. What I want is to leave both screens undisturbed, just dimming the laptop. Similar to powering off an external monitor, in that Windows continues feeding the signal to the monitor, but the monitor just doesn't display it, cuz it's turned off.

Lemme know if your T-series machine can turns off just the laptop screen, leaving other monitor(s) active, while not moving any laptop open windows to the other monitor(s).

Not sure this will work, just a guess. How about setting power manager to "do nothing" when the laptop lid is closed? Still, closing the lid will cause the lid switch to turn the lamp off, but the desktop on that monitor shouldn't be affected....maybe.

Something else you might want to try is MonitorOff: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownote ... _id=655531 but I've never used it with multiple or laptop monitors, so don't know how well it would work for your situation.

All worth a try, but nogo here, too. Already had 'do nothing' in effect, so no help there. Interestingly enough, I have the MonitorOff utility, which is kinda handy at times. Unfortunately, it affects all monitors and doesn't appear to have any other options.

Dunno if maybe there is some sort of Windows API or what, as I'm not a Windows developer to have ever gotten into this sort of thing.

Windows power schemes have a setting to dim (lower the brightness) of the display after the computer isn't used for some specified time. At least for me, this doesn't affect the external monitor (HP ZR24w via DisplayPort) but it does dim the laptop display (X200).

Unfortunatelly there is no API, all programs turn both displays off because the API that is there does just that and doesn't allow you to specifiy the display.

^ Thanks for the ideas. For some reason, dimming didn't work for me.

So, I guess the thing to do is to make the external monitor my main screen and prior to closing the laptop lid, minimize all windows on the laptop so they don't pollute the external monitor. Not exactly what I'd like, but workable in this situation.

I don't understand what you are trying to do.
If you dim the laptops monitor so that you can't see it or close the lid, you don't have the use of the laptops screen. So there is no practical difference from doing a monitor switch using the F7 key.

* At times, I want to use both screens in extended mode.
* At times, I want to dim/turn off the laptop screen only.
* Fn+F7 results in moving windows from one screen to the other, which I don't want.
* Closing the lid and reopening it does similar to Fn+F7.
* I just want to dim the laptop, while leaving all windows on both screens unmoved, then later fire up the laptop screen, with all windows in original positions. I can do this if using two external monitors only; just physically turn off one monitor, then turn it on again later. Can't seem to get this same result if one of the screens is the laptop itself.

Oh, I see... I never really thought about doing what you're trying to do. I just tested with my T400 and I can do the opposite of what you're trying to do (turn off the external monitor) easily enough without disturbing anything.

The easiest thing to do if you want to pretty things up before/after you close your lid would be to click the "show desktop" button section of the taskbar. Then reopen what you want to use.

The other alternative would be a hardware hack to throw a switch on the inverter line. That would power off the backlight without saying disturbing Windows.

Yeah, great minds think alike, eh? I'd just about come to your conclusion, as what I wanna do doesn't seem (easily)possible.

Worth a try, tho...coulda worked, except for open windows on the various screens being shoved back & forth between the two.