The purpose of this exercise is to drive a monitor that is mounted above the bed, so that I can use the computer lying down without having to strain to see the laptop screen. Thus, we are simply trying to "clone" the display. This should be utterly feasible, because the external monitor has a better resolution than the laptop screen AND can run at a higher refresh rate. But it just won't happen.
Every single time, you boot the laptop, the Vaio bootup screen appears on both the laptop screen and the external monitor screen. Then the BIOS checking equipment screen appears, then the Windows login screen. It displays for all of a few seconds, then the external monitor "gives up", and displays the "lost signal" message. Once the signal has been "lost", the only way to get it back is to reboot the laptop.
There is nothing wrong with the monitor or cable, as we can plug our ancient laptop directly into it without any faffing whatsoever. I'm assuming this HAS to be a Windows XP problem, as the picture only disappears when XP starts. The only way we can get a picture to stay on the external monitor while Windows runs is to boot Windows XP in Safe mode, which is useless for running Sims 2.
Yeah, it COULD be that the graphics card can't power 2 monitors at once at full resolution - but I don't even WANT to power 2 monitors at once. I just want the picture to appear on the external monitor, I don't care about the internal screen because I can't see it. But if we use EITHER the Vaio F7 or Windows' own monitor choosing thingy to tell it to display only on the external monitor, we end up with no visible picture, because it fucks off at the login screen.
The Vaio troubleshooting thing is completely useless because it assumes you are running the second monitor off a secondary display adapter, but we don't have one. Do we need to get one? If so, why on earth does the Vaio bother to have a video out port, if it can't actually be used? And how come it works in Safe mode but not normal?
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The purpose of this exercise is to drive a monitor that is mounted above the bed, so that I can use the computer lying down without having to strain to see the laptop screen. Thus, we are simply trying to "clone" the display. This should be utterly feasible, because the external monitor has a better resolution than the laptop screen AND can run at a higher refresh rate. But it just won't happen.
Every single time, you boot the laptop, the Vaio bootup screen appears on both the laptop screen and the external monitor screen. Then the BIOS checking equipment screen appears, then the Windows login screen. It displays for all of a few seconds, then the external monitor "gives up", and displays the "lost signal" message. Once the signal has been "lost", the only way to get it back is to reboot the laptop.
There is nothing wrong with the monitor or cable, as we can plug our ancient laptop directly into it without any faffing whatsoever. I'm assuming this HAS to be a Windows XP problem, as the picture only disappears when XP starts. The only way we can get a picture to stay on the external monitor while Windows runs is to boot Windows XP in Safe mode, which is useless for running Sims 2.
Yeah, it COULD be that the graphics card can't power 2 monitors at once at full resolution - but I don't even WANT to power 2 monitors at once. I just want the picture to appear on the external monitor, I don't care about the internal screen because I can't see it. But if we use EITHER the Vaio F7 or Windows' own monitor choosing thingy to tell it to display only on the external monitor, we end up with no visible picture, because it fucks off at the login screen.
The Vaio troubleshooting thing is completely useless because it assumes you are running the second monitor off a secondary display adapter, but we don't have one. Do we need to get one? If so, why on earth does the Vaio bother to have a video out port, if it can't actually be used? And how come it works in Safe mode but not normal?