Dual screen setup, want to share monitor

valve90210 · 24 Oct 2006 at 11:50

Hi there, I havea bit of a strange question but hopefully one not something that is too difficult to answer.

I am shortly to be moving in with my girl friend and we will only have room for one computer desk, so both our computers will be located there.

I run my own design business part time and as such I am looking at adding a second 19"TFT to my setup as it makes photoshop and Quark much easier to use. This is easy to setup and works very nicely (I have this setup at work and I love it).

My plan was for my girlfriends computer to share one of the monitors via a switching box. I have been using a setup like this (but sharing only one monitor) at home for a while now and it works fine.

My question is, if we both want to use our computers at the same time, assuming the monitor that is shared is not the primary monitor of my computer, will mine be happy with just the one monitor, or will it change my settings so the next time I boot up with both monitors switched to be conected to my computer I'll have to go into the display properties dialog and reset it up to use the dual monitors?

Does that make sense?

Valve

Kreeeee · 24 Oct 2006 at 13:47

FrankJH · 24 Oct 2006 at 14:22

Maybe I am being stupid but if one pc is attached to the shared monitor via DVI and the second pc via vga - why not just use the inbuilt input switching instead of having an external box (most vga switch boxes are vga and not dvi anyway?)

This method you would not have any changes on your work pc either - the only thing to watch out for is when your gf is using her pc, some of your windows could appear (and not be seen) on "her" monitor , depending on where they last were closed down from - if you see what I mean.

StevenG · 24 Oct 2006 at 14:43

FrankJH said:
the only thing to watch out for is when your gf is using her pc, some of your windows could appear (and not be seen) on "her" monitor , depending on where they last were closed down from - if you see what I mean.

Speaking from experience?

valve90210 · 24 Oct 2006 at 15:11

Frank JH, I hadn't thought of that actually.

Currently I have a Samsung 913N 19" which only has a VGA input. I was trying to decided whether to get a matching monitor (or the newer equivilent model) and use a DVI to VGA adapter to connect it (hence using the VGA switcher). Or if I could find one at a similar price find a monitor that had DVI and VGA inputs so I could use the DVI.

Valve

stvmor · 24 Oct 2006 at 15:37

Yep!

FrankJH said:
Maybe I am being stupid but if one pc is attached to the shared monitor via DVI and the second pc via vga - why not just use the inbuilt input switching instead of having an external box (most vga switch boxes are vga and not dvi anyway?)

This method you would not have any changes on your work pc either - the only thing to watch out for is when your gf is using her pc, some of your windows could appear (and not be seen) on "her" monitor , depending on where they last were closed down from - if you see what I mean.

Doing that at this very moment

Switching 2nd monitor between main machine and spare/downloads machine all the time. I do sometimes forget and 'lose' app's to the 2nd monitor :rolleyes:

valve90210 · 24 Oct 2006 at 16:23

What happens if you've got the second monitor switched to the second PC, and you switch on the main comp, and then use something like Photoshop if you've got all the tool bars setup on the second screen? Do the tools bars reposition themselves to the one screen or do they stay where they would be normally and hence not be visable?

If they move, what happens the next time you use the computer and have both monitors switched to it, does you have to setup the tool bars again?

Valve

FrankJH · 24 Oct 2006 at 16:33

StevenG said:
Speaking from experience?

Schhhhhh hoping no-one would pick up on that

stvmor - for this kind of thing I think it would pay to purchase a slightly more expensive monitor with dvi and vga and have it integrated rather than having a seperate monitor - I guess it all depends on room / desk layout etc , but that would be my choice rather than getting a cheaper tft and maybe kicking yourself down the line when you only have one input

The only proviso on the above is that its potentially likely that you will actually get a better picture from your dual input tft than your main monitor and want to swap them, even though you wouldnt be able to - if you see what I mean. - Not going to mention that your g/f could moan that the two monitors dont match - hahahaha

valve90210 said:
What happens if you've got the second monitor switched to the second PC, and you switch on the main comp, and then use something like Photoshop if you've got all the tool bars setup on the second screen? Do the tools bars reposition themselves to the one screen or do they stay where they would be normally and hence not be visable?

If they move, what happens the next time you use the computer and have both monitors switched to it, does you have to setup the tool bars again?

Valve

as was picked up above - hence the joke at the top, anything on the second monitor like tool bars etc would remain hidden until you switched monitor inputs, so on a reboot as long as you didnt manually change anything while hidden, the said toolbars would remain on 2nd monitor.

(no disrespect meant) if you think about it this makes sense as the main pc actually is still seing the 2nd monitor attached - its only a visual reference that is missing, which the pc couldnt possibly know about.

This is in complete contrast to actually removing the vga or dvi cable to the 2nd monitor when the main pc is rebooted then , the pc would reposition any item previously on the secondary tft to appear on the now sole tft connected.

Hope this makes more sense

valve90210 · 24 Oct 2006 at 16:54

FrankJH said:
as was picked up above - hence the joke at the top, anything on the second monitor like tool bars etc would remain hidden until you switched monitor inputs, so on a reboot as long as you didnt manually change anything while hidden, the said toolbars would remain on 2nd monitor.

(no disrespect meant) if you think about it this makes sense as the main pc actually is still seing the 2nd monitor attached - its only a visual reference that is missing, which the pc couldnt possibly know about.

This is in complete contrast to actually removing the vga or dvi cable to the 2nd monitor when the main pc is rebooted then , the pc would reposition any item previously on the secondary tft to appear on the now sole tft connected.

Hope this makes more sense

That's what I was wondering about cos they way my switcher that I have at the moment seems to work is that it actually switches totally between the 2 inputs so if it is switched to the second computer, if the main computer was booted, it wouldn't recognise that there was a second monitor present and hence would repostion toolbars etc. In which case I guess I'd ahve to reposition them again when I booted the next time with both monitors connected to the main comp.

Valve

FrankJH · 24 Oct 2006 at 19:12

thinking about it more - even when not in use, maybe the 2ndry monitor recieves a signal of some kind from the pc to know its still attached - but with a switch box in the middle terminating that signal windows doesnt register it....... i dont know if this is true but its certainly possible.

valve90210 · 25 Oct 2006 at 09:53

That seems to be about right, though I have noticed at work that if I have switched off the secondary monitor (ie it's not in standby) when I boot the computer, it boots to just the one screen.

Valve

FrankJH · 25 Oct 2006 at 23:43

THats very interesting - wonder if thats something to do with version / patching on Windows or the type / age of monitor, or I guess even type of connection ......

I know using dvi on both a 2407 (primary) and 2005 (secondary) whether secondary is on or not then IE windows or whatnot appear on the secondry screen until I physically unattach it

XP SP2 also with all new updates etc

valve90210 · 31 Oct 2006 at 12:29

I suppose it could be to do with the age of various things, the secondary monitor is about 5 years old now, as in fact is the graphics card.

Not quite sure what version/patches wondows has as it's all done y the IT department and god knows what they decide to do when it comes to updates etc.

I think I'm gonna go for the Samsung screen that is the updated model of what I have, ok it only has a VGA input but the vga input I've been using on my current monitor is great quality and perfect for anything I need to do, and I don't see the newone being any worse.

I'm not planning on upgrading my computer any time soon as it's still runs everyting I want it to run very nicely.

Valve

cokecan · 31 Oct 2006 at 13:08

ive been using 2 samsung 913N's on my setup with a vga switch box, but sharing the second TFT with the 360 so a similar situation to you (instead of sharing it with another comp)

I use ultramon to manage them (it is an awesome tool). I have a couple of profiles set up in it, one called dual TFT that loads with windows so that both tft's are enabled in windows etc and the taskbar is extended across both, and the other called 360, which just keeps the first TFT as the default (as normal) and disables the second one so any programs running on the second are automatically moved to the first.

you can also set up keyboard shortcuts in ultramon to load any specific profile (i.e. ctrl + left arrow on my comp loads the dual TFT profile while ctrl + right arrow loads the 360 profile)

StevenG · 31 Oct 2006 at 13:39

agreed, Unltamon is the way forward. the guy who wrote that is Genious. Get it now!