I have been using my Sony Vaio with a Samsung external monitor for months. I close the lid (set it to "do nothing") and work on the monitor with a keyboard and mouse. Recently I was playing with the display settings to try to get the lcd to turn off when the lid was closed (draws a lot of battery).
When I did this, initially it went into dual monitor mode where I could drag open applications between the two monitors (laptop screen / 17" Samsung) - this is not what I wabted and somehow got it back to single mode with the laptop screen as the primary by changing the settings. However, now if I hook the external monitor it will only function in vga mode (have to hit F8 to get into VGA mode) - if I raise the resolution the external monitor goes black and will not come back unless I reboot. If I reboot and do not select F8/VGA the monitor is still just black. One other thing, when I reboot, it shows the XP Pro / Microsoft logo but then goes black. I tested another laptop on this monitor and it worked fine. I downloaded the drivers for the Samsung 171v and installed them - no change.
Thanks for your help.
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I'd try booting into VGA mode and if you see the second display showing in Device manager, remove it. I'd then disconnect the external display and reboot. Then reattach the external display and see what you have. I suspect that the display is OK, but the laptop is remembering the out of range display settings and that's giving you no display..
jhyiesla
Tried your suggestion, when I boot in and look under device manager there is only one display defined.
Let me know if you have some other ideas as to what this might be. Also, I now have it working in dual monitor mode (the lcd displa on the notebook and the external samsug monitor). It is kind of interesting to have the extra space to drag wiindows to, but ultilmately is not what I want - I want to be able to just use the external Samsug flat screen monitor.
Thanks
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by: BradGrouxPosted on 2008-06-30 at 11:49:03ID: 21901876
Make sure to update all of the drivers on your notebook via Sony's site. Also, run Windows update and install any updates found. Your machine may have lost the proper drivers for your video card while you were swapping back and forth.
Check out the link below for just how to work with two monitors. To not use one of the monitors uncheck the "extend my window's desktop to this monitor" box in the Display settings.
http://www.microsoft.com/w