Trouble configuring duelview with new LCD panel

[themadjester]

So, to increase efficiency, and to get away from my old poorly lit laptop monitor (LT) I purchased a very nice LG 23' LCD. The screen is nice.. and I am happy with it except for one thing:

I am unable to set it as the primary display in duelview (which is kind of important)

In a word it is confounding.

the system is a Toshiba P100 with a Gforce 7200 go

I can use the new LCD as on its own as the primary display
I can use the Laptop LCD as the primary display
I can use the new LCD as a secondary display in duelview
but I cannot use it as the primary display in duelview

in fact if I have it set as the owly display, and go to the windows display options, windows plays along... clicking identify shows my new LCD as "1" clicking the greyed out LT monitor prompts dialog asking if I would like to set enable it as a span or something... and when I select apply, it sets the LT LCD as the primary one (at which point I may have howled in anger like an animal...)

Attempting to solve set this up from the NVideo utilities yeilds much the same result, single view works, however when I click the textbox "primary monitor" actually changes its text removing my new LCD as an option

My first attempted solution was the update the video card drivers of coarse, with no success. before or after.
Then suspecting some sort of blocking, I updated the bios to the newest version (there is however no bios option to use a secondary monitor as the primary).
If I go to the windows display properties and select advanced-> monitor in duelview the LG is greyed out, LT is primary and changing to plug and play is changed back to primary the next time I check the settings (could be interference by the nvidia drivers but as mentioned they wont let me remove or change the LT as primary monitor).
I then tried installing the drivers from the CD that the monitor came with (and here I was thinking they included that for my coffee mug...) to no avail.

I am pretty much ready for some registry editing, third party applications, or other hacking of my hardware at this point, as I am beginning to feel that this is programmed in such a way as to never allow the user to change default monitors. Anyone ever had this problem before and survived it?

I hope the problem is an incompetent user, but I fear lazy or inept programmers.

The irony is I had thought having two screens would save me time...

[themadjester]

I feel silly having not mentioned this despite my wall of text: Windows XP, fully updated

[Studlyami]

I have had a little experience with this, but I'm afraid it won't help you much. My friend had a laptop (don't remember the specs, but it had geforce video card somewhere in the 7000's) and he had the same issues. I tried to help him out, but I couldn't get it to work and I tried pretty much the same thing you did. Although, on his laptop he couldn't use the new monitor by itself so he could only use the new monitor if he was in dual monitor mode. Also, we weren't able to make his new monitor primary monitor. If you find a way please post your results and hopefully someone else here can shed some light on how to fix it or why there is this limitation in laptops?

[themadjester]

yea, its a tricky thing. Part of the problem I believe is drivers that are stepping on each others toes since they share so many settings

When I was researching the problem, on one forum for dell users some people solved a similar problem by changing their windows/nvidia settings in a special order in relation to their function keys built into the laptop... Did not solve my problem however.

Interresringly when my computer starts with the LG LCD set as the only/primary device, the bios screen/boot selector show up on the laptop monit... grrr...
Edit: I should note that before when I had dual monitors the oposite happened... always showed up on my external monitor unless it was unplugged... why?... no idea..
Edit edit: well, actually bad functional testing by Toshiba, MS and NVidia comes to mind

[themadjester]

If anyone could answer any of these questions it would help in trouble shooting ;)
1) Is there any significant difference between VGA and DVI protocall (for the given circumstance)? Basically is there a reasonable possabilityDVI is my problem, or is that kind of thing unlikely.

In hardware device manager, under monitor I have three display devices listed:
a) Default monitor
b) Plug and play monitor
c) Default monitor
In safe mode I unplugged the external monitor and uninstalled the display adapted, the in regular XP, I removed all the monitor drivers (and unplugged, they didn't show up in safe mode) and restarted.
2) why are they still here (must require silver bullets)
3) what do they actually do? default vs plug and play, I know what a driver does very well... but how do they interact, what is default supposed to mean, given that...
4) Any idea why when I select the LG monitor and set it to be the "default monitor" (when not grayed out) it will not complain, but will resume bing plug and play when I check it later.
5) Why the redundancy?
6) Do the display drivers bundled with the monitor actually do anything, and which device may I/should I install them over.
and finally:
7) nvcpl.exe/dll:When I try to 'trick' xp into allowing me to set the second monitor as primary I receive an error saying I do not have admin privileges and another telling me the settings cannot be supported (both of which are ridiculous). it seems to me nvcpl could be blocking changes to display settings. This cannot be disabled as a task in msconfig for testing this... am I barking up the wrong tree?

I am posting this because I apparently desire to share my pain.