Thinkpads Forum

My T60 swapped the primary display when using two external monitors in the mini-dock (dvi and vga). I've always had the primary as DVI and then yesterday after working with a secondary display while not docked my displays when re-docked are swapped. I can't figure out how to swap them back.

In the ATI Catalyst Control Center Displays Manager the option to set which monitor is "Primary" is disabled, (i.e., right-click on a display, the Primary menu item is grayed out and not selectable).

I tried setting the boot monitor in bios to DVI+LCD and that had no effect (the vga still shows up first during boot and vga is still primary). I even tried setting the primary device to PCIe but that didn't do anything (I'm not really using PCIe, I have a minidock--but it was worth a shot).

I have UltraMon installed and it's option to swap primary display is also grayed out.

Please help.

Thanks,

Sam

I have had similar problems - when restarting the computer while docked, the VGA starts up as the primary, and the DVI as secondary. To make it work, I have to unplug the VGA screen during boot up, and plug it back in (around the time the logon box is displayed). I have not tried changing the BIOS as you have, but since it's a docking issue, I wonder if there is some way to tell the docking station what priority to set. I will also be testing if the presentation manager can force any settings.

In this thread http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=23765 it looks like deforest had the same problem and uses profiles to save/restore settings.

Do you have both external monitors plugged in through the Advanced Mini Dock? (I haven't tried dual external displays yet..)

In the ATI Catalyst Control Center Displays Manager the option to set which monitor is "Primary" is disabled, (i.e., right-click on a display, the Primary menu item is grayed out and not selectable).

Can't you drag and drop Attached Displays around the CCC Displays Manager? Drop the DVI on the "Main" box, or remove the VGA temporarily by dropping it below in the "currently disabled" box.

I can't speak for Sam, but yes, in my case both the primary and secondary displays were plugged in the DVI and VGA ports on the Advanced Mini Dock, respectively. The laptop screen was not used. The problem isn't so much that you can't set it up how you want, it's that the settings are ignored on startup before Windows is loaded, and need to be corrected after logging in.

Here's how I do it:

1. In the BIOS setup, Select DVI as the primary
2. In Catalyst Control Center, click on Displays Manager. Then Right click in the box just below "Desktop 1", click on "Swap displays" and then select "Swap display order only."

Once you do that, you should be able to select the DVI monitor as primary.

seeplus,

Yes you can drag the monitors around so they have the right orientation, but which one is "primary" is important as that's the one that has the start menu and task bar. Personally I can't stand having a taskbar and start menu on the right screen. Also apps pop-up on the same monitor they were on last time so if you just drag monitors around, they pop up on the wrong monitor.

RonS,

Thanks for the tip about swapping displays within catalyst right-click on desktops. I wasn't aware that was there (they did a great job hiding it!). I'll try that the next time things swap on their own.

Best regards,

Sam