Seeing Double (or, in this case, triple)

The Trials and Tribulations of Configuring Multi-monitor Support in W2K

BY DEBRA LITTLEJOHN SHINDER, MCSE etc.

REPRINTED FROM WWW.CRAMSESSION.COM

Windows 2000 introduces a variety of new features that NT lacked. Some of these are designed to make the administrator’s life easier; for example, the ability to set disk quotas or to delegate administrative authority over organizational units. Others were created to provide for better protection of sensitive data in today’s increasingly security-conscious IT world.  EFS (the encrypting file system) and IPSec fit in that category. And a few of the new features are more on the order of “oh, wow, this is really neat.”

Multiple monitor support probably belongs to the last group. Initially introduced with Windows 98, this feature has now been incorporated into Windows 2000. We no longer have to give up stability and security in exchange for an easy way to implement a multiple monitor configuration.  Having a row of screens lined up across your workspace, and being able to spread your programs and icons and toolbars across them, dragging and dropping from one to the other, is just plain cool.

My multi-monitor desktop

Oh, don’t misunderstand; it’s also extremely useful (after all, I have to justify the cost of those extra monitors and video cards when tax time comes around). In fact, a multiple monitor setup can increase your productivity and make your job easier in many situations, including the following:

• Graphics manipulation. If you use software such as Corel PhotoPaint or Adobe Photoshop or Jasc Software’s Paint Shop Pro to create photographic art – especially if you combine elements of one photo with those of another – it really helps to be able to view different photo files on different screens. It’s also the only way you can work effectively with large panoramic photos, as reducing the size so that such a picture will fit horizontally on one screen usually renders the vertical measurement so small that you won’t be able to see it well. Zoom or increase the size and you can no longer see the photo in its entirety. Multiple monitors solve the problem nicely, allowing the panorama to flow across screens.

• Research projects. When I’m researching a technical article, I often refer to several sources simultaneously. For example, I may have a web browser open to search for relevant material “out there,” a reference program such as Microsoft’s TechNet, the software’s Help files, and perhaps a virtual machine in which I’m running the software itself. Even though my primary monitor is 21”, it’s impossible to arrange all those windows so that some aren’t hidden behind the others. But with my three-monitor setup, everything I need is there, where I can find it at a glance without having to go hunting. The same techniques apply to non-technical research. My son finds the multiple monitors helpful in researching term papers for History class and other subjects.

• Writing projects. Whether you’re writing a personal essay, an article for a tech magazine, or the Great American Novel, writing almost always involves editing and revision. I often need two copies of a document open – the one on which I’m working, and another that I can scroll through to verify what I said earlier in the document. For example, if I’m writing a chapter for a study guide, I’ll need to construct a set of bulleted “key points” at the end. Rather than scroll up and down through my one document, looking for points (and the correct order) for my summary, I open another copy of the document to use for that purpose. With one monitor, I have to squeeze the two copies in side by side, or switch back and forth between the two windows. When both copies are on the same screen, it can be easy to forget which is the reference copy and which I’m actually working on. If I can put one copy on a secondary monitor, it’s much easier to work with them together, and to keep their identities straight. This is also useful when you need to compare two versions of a document, to determine just how drastically the Evil Editor changed your masterpiece (insert smiley face here to let my editor know I’m only kidding).

• Really big spreadsheets. As you can see in the following photo, a multi-monitor configuration allows you to put the “spread” into a spreadsheet; even with an extraordinary number of columns, you can still see the whole picture.

Note how the Excel spreadsheet spreads across all three monitors

These are just a few uses to which I put my multiple monitors. There are dozens of others. My son recently caught the stock market bug, and he likes being able to emulate a Wall Street day trader, with NASDAQ on one screen and Dow-Jones on the other (luckily, he’s only playing with virtual money – or maybe not so luckily, considering the fact that he’s up a couple of hundred thousand dollars at this point). A friend of mine tells me that certain games are “totally awesome” when spread across two or three monitors. I’m not much of a gamer myself (Tetris is my time-waster of choice), but I can see how the additional screen real estate would enhance flight sims and other types of games.

It’s not too hard to convince most people that having multiple monitors is neat, cool, and even useful.  So why aren’t more Windows 2000 users taking advantage of this feature? It is much easier to set up multiple monitors in W2K than in NT (which required either expensive multiple head video cards or buying specific cards designed to work together, and then often involved much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth to get all the monitors up and running together). However, getting all your monitors to work under Windows 2000 isn’t quite as simple as the Help files make it sound. Depending on the video cards you use, it may not be a no-brainer (although it’s certainly not rocket science, either).

Configuring Multi-monitor Support in the Real World

Based on my experience with several different computers, using different types of video cards, the most important factor in configuring multiple monitors under Windows 2000 is making sure you have updated drivers for all video adapters. Hint: just because there are drivers for the card(s) on the W2K CD does not mean those drivers will allow the card to function with a secondary monitor. My most recent experience with a couple of Diamond Stealth cards and an on-board primary display (an Intel 810 on a Dell Optiplex) bears that out.

The Dell, a new computer I’d purchased to use at our new office, was already up and functioning with the onboard video adapter connected to a 21” Dell Trinitron monitor. I installed the two new video cards into empty PCI slots and plugged in two 15” NEC monitors. Booted up, Windows 2000 announced that new hardware had been found, and went about doing its Plug and Play thing.  After it finished, my primary display was still working fine, and the power light on one of the NECs had turned from orange to green, although there was no display. That was to be expected; before you can use multiple monitors, you have to go into the Display Settings in Control Panel and check a box to extend the Windows desktop to the second monitor.

In Display Settings, I saw that there were only two monitor icons instead of three. I decided it would be best to get one of the new monitors up and running first and then worry about the other, so I checked the appropriate box and hit the “apply” button.

Half successful: I now had two monitors
in the Display Settings property box

Oops – maybe I hadn’t been half successful after all. My desktop was now displayed on the NEC – but the Trinitron had gone black.  That didn’t seem like much of an accomplishment; I now had only 15” of screen real estate instead of 21”.

Hmmm.  Remembering Rule No. 247 of Windows troubleshooting, “when in doubt, it never hurts to try rebooting,” I did.  I noticed that now the POST displayed on the NEC instead of the Trinitron. Windows 2000 hung out at the startup screen for a very long time, but having experienced this before with multiple monitor installations, I was patient. Eventually Windows loaded and viola! I had two desktops.  I opened Display Settings back up and saw that the Trinitron was still identified as the primary (number 1) monitor.  My taskbar and Office Shortcut bar were on that desktop, so it must be true.

Now I took a look in Device Manager. Under Display Adapters, it showed an Intel 810 and two Diamond Stealth IIIs. One of the Stealths appeared to be okay; the other showed the infamous yellow exclamation point indicating it had a problem. Opening its property sheet was less than helpful. The message I got was “the device could not start.” Gosh, thanks.

However, I didn’t like having the POST display on the smaller monitor, so I decided to restart and go into the CMOS to change the primary display there.

Important Note: which monitor is set as primary in the CMOS has absolutely no correlation with which one is set as primary in Windows.

After making that change, saving the settings and restarting yet again, the POST came up on the Trinitron. Progress. Well, maybe.

Maybe not. Both NEC screens were now black. I was back where I’d begun: one 21” monitor. Obviously I was doing something wrong. Or maybe Windows was.  I did a little research, on TechNet and a couple of good multi-monitor support sites on the web. Buried in a message board on one of them, I ran across a reference to the fact that some video drivers don’t support the ability to function as a secondary monitor.

Ah ha. I just might be on to something now.  The NEC had been perfectly happy to function as the primary bootup monitor, after all. It died when I made the Trinitron primary in the CMOS. Perhaps the drivers Windows 2000 installed for it didn’t support secondary monitor function. That would also explain why the second NEC wasn’t working at all, as one of the others always had the role of primary monitor. The third guy never had a chance.

My next stop was the Diamond website, where – after a lot of rummaging around – I found updated Windows 2000 drivers for the Stealth III. Sure enough, the date was several months later than that on the drivers installed from the Windows CD. I downloaded the file, and prepared to test my theory.

First I removed the old drivers for both Stealths. But I made the mistake of rebooting the computer at that point (actually, sometimes it can hurt) and of course, when Windows started up, it detected the cards and started installing drivers. Okay. Instead of letting Windows use its drivers, this time I installed the ones I’d downloaded.  Now when I went to the Device Man, I saw the following lovely sight:

Three display adapters, alive and well and enumerated in Device Manager

There was nary a yellow exclamation point anywhere around.  I felt like celebrating. I still didn’t have a multiple display, though. I had to go back to the Display Properties box and check those checkboxes.

This time I saw:

All three monitors show up in the
Display Properties Settings tab

Now I could select each graphics card in turn from the drop down box, select to extend the desktop to it, and configure its settings. One of the many neat things about Windows 2000’s multi-monitor feature is that you can configure color depth and resolution differently for each card. That means one monitor can display at 1152x864 (as I have my 21” monitor set) another can be set for 800x600, and the third at 640x480.  This is particularly handy when you develop webpages, as you can just drag the browser window from screen to screen to see how your pages will look at different resolutions.

A few things I learned from this experience:

·         Be sure the video drivers for the cards to which you want to attach the secondary monitors have Windows 2000 drivers that support that role.

·         Don’t assume that the drivers supplied with the Windows 2000 CD for your card will support the secondary role.

·         Although by no means mandatory, it’s less confusing if you set the same card/monitor to be primary in both Windows and the CMOS.

·         Multiple monitors are really neat.

I enjoyed my three-monitor setup at the office so much that a week later, I added a third monitor to my dual-monitor setup at home.  So now I have six monitors, albeit on two different machines. Windows 2000, though, will support up to ten monitors per computer – and I do still have a couple of PCI slots empty.

DEBRA LITTLEJOHN SHINDER is an instructor in the Eastfield College MCSE training program, a columnist for Swynk and Brainbuzz, and – together with her husband, Dr. Thomas Shinder – editor and author of eleven books on Windows 2000. She just completed a book on general networking for Cisco Press, to be released in the first quarter of 2001, and she and Tom have authored numerous MCSE certification courses for DigitalThink, a major online training company.