external monitor- HELP

[mooingmooseman]

I just got an external monitor to go with my T43 (2668-CTO). However, I've been having trouble getting it to work the way I want to.

Mainly I want to open games on my external monitor. But the external is a secondary screen. The games (battlefield 2142, star craft, war craft3) don’t have a “windowed” mode that I can use to drag over to the second screen (because if you close a program in the 2nd screen, it’ll open up again next time there)

It seems like the only solution (tell me if I’m wrong) is to temporarily make the external monitor my primary. However, when I go to the display settings, the “primary” button is blacked out. I need to DISABLE the laptop LCD, make external the primary, attach the laptop LCD back, and then drag the external to the right side. It’s a super hassle to go through. Is there any one-step way of doing this?

I’ve tried ultramon and it didn’t seem to work (and it kept crashing on me, I had to use beta because I’m running vista)

Thanks in advance for your help community!

[superboss]

I just got an external monitor to go with my T43 (2668-CTO). However, I've been having trouble getting it to work the way I want to.

Mainly I want to open games on my external monitor. But the external is a secondary screen. The games (battlefield 2142, star craft, war craft3) don’t have a “windowed” mode that I can use to drag over to the second screen (because if you close a program in the 2nd screen, it’ll open up again next time there)

It seems like the only solution (tell me if I’m wrong) is to temporarily make the external monitor my primary. However, when I go to the display settings, the “primary” button is blacked out. I need to DISABLE the laptop LCD, make external the primary, attach the laptop LCD back, and then drag the external to the right side. It’s a super hassle to go through. Is there any one-step way of doing this?

I’ve tried ultramon and it didn’t seem to work (and it kept crashing on me, I had to use beta because I’m running vista)

Thanks in advance for your help community!

fn+f7 is your friend?

[mooingmooseman]

actually it's not.

my default setup is to have laptop screen as my primary, external LCD as my extended secondary. fn+f7 does NOT function at this point for whatever reason. if I disable one screen (either one) they will continue to cycle UNTIL the aforementioned setup. after that, fn+f7 no longer cycles anything. it seems for some reason that particular setup locks up fn+f7

fn+f7 NEVER lets me switch which one i want to be primary anyways. nor does it move my game to the secondary screen. so the best fn+f7 could possibly do it turn off my laptop lcd and force the external to be the primary which isn't completely what i want

thanks for the try though. any other suggestions?

[SteveS]

Try downloading and installing an updated Presentation Manager from the Lenovo Support and Drivers web site.

[mooingmooseman]

they don't have it for vista..

[coreman]

Have you gone into "Advanced" (opens up ATI Options) under Display Porperties and is there an option (under "Settings") to make the Monitor your Primary Display and the laptop LCD the external?

I don't have T43 nor Vista so not sure if this helps...I tried it with my 15" external and it did switch the displays for me...I have T41/Win XP...

[mooingmooseman]

i'll go home and check again but i'm almost certain i've already checked that

here is the main problem: i am FORCED to use the laptop screen as primary. the primary checkboxes, whether in UltraMon or the windows display settings, is greyed out. I cannot unselect it to be primary

the workaround i have is to use f7 to DISABLE the laptop monitor. after which point i can then check the box to make the external the primary. but it just takes a whiles to do every time.