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Latitude D600 with D/Dock: Dual Analog Monitors
I had a user with a Latitude D600 (Windows XP SP2) docked to a D/Port Advanced Port Replicator, and she wanted dual displays, i.e., a second conventional analog CRT monitor. Dell technical support told us to purchase a D/Dock Expansion Station for this purpose. So we did, plus we bought an ATI Radeon 9250, installed it in the D/Dock's PCI slot, attached the second monitor to it, and downloaded and installed the latest ATI drivers from the ATI web site.
No dice. With the Radeon card installed in the PCI slot, we don't get a video signal from either monitor, not even during POST.
What are we doing wrong? At the advice of Dell tech support, we've spent quite a bit of money here on the D/Dock and the PCI video card, but with no result.
Thanks!
I have that same configuration - Latitute D600 /D-Port and run dual monitors just fine, with or without the docking station. Because the Lat has a video out port, you just need to setup the display drivers and Windows XP for dual monitor support.
First, install the latest ATI video drivers - then configure dual monitor support in the windows display properties. Google "windows XP dual monitor" for numerous sites with the details.
JPinSL
JPinSL: on a physical level, how did you attach two conventional analog CRT monitors to your Latitude? I realize that the Latitude, and the D/Dock, have DVI ports, but we obviously can't use those with our monitors (and we can't adapt the DVI ports for conventional displays, since you can't convert the digital signal to analog). I suspect one of your two screens is a digital LCD? Thanks.
Hmmm. I read the original request as wanting to add one external monitor to the laptop.
If you are looking to add two external monitors, then that's something that would require a second video adapter.
What I have is two independent displays, the built-in laptop screen and an external 19" LCD screen.
Physically, it's setup just as you would do to run an LCD projector - plug the external video into the blue VGA port. Logically, the ATI software and WinXP dual-displays treat them as independent screens.
I run with Outlook displayed on the laptop and whatever I'm working on displayed on the 19" LCD screen. That way, I never have to toggle over to Outlook to read email.
JPinSL
Has anyone gotten this to work???
I was successfully able to use the Lattitude D600 in a 3-screen configuration (laptop and 2 monitors) with a D/Dock for about 3 months without issue.
About a month ago when I try to boot into the configuration all of the screens are black although there seems to be Disk activity. I am using a ATI RADEON 7000 in my D/Dock. How can I get my configuration back?
A coworker just tried to do the same thing with his new Latitude D610 a D/DOCK and an ATI RADEON 9250 card and is getting the same thing. It appears that the machine is working, but the displays across all of the screens are blank.
If you eject the laptop from the D/dock, the XP logon screen is there, but for some reason, the D/dock does not like the video card.
We are going to try this configuration with a Nvidia card and see if we have better results, but so far we have not had much luck.
- It's not really documented anywhere that I could find, but you need to go into the BIOS and change the default Video option to System instead of OnBoard video. You can then use multiple monitors.
Once I set this, the second card was recognized and working. I used an Nvidia 4400 PCI video card in the D/Dock which gives me the ability to plug two monitors in.
There is the screen of the Laptop and the other port on the back of the laptop.
You should be able to extend to include all 4. I had nothing but problems with ATI cards, but switching to Nvidia seems to work fine now.
Marjenlin
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Posted April 30th, 2005 15:00