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MBP + External Display

N

neenja

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 17, 2008
292
0
So my MBP is my primary computer. I use an Apple Cinema Display as my external monitor. Usually I have it slept.. so when I wake it from my external keyboard, the display shows up on my monitor as usual. My laptop is kept closed under my monitor stand. I can even reboot, and have the external display automatically show up.

Now here is the problem.. I use bootcamp with Windows XP Pro sp3 for my gaming. When I reboot into windows, my external monitor does not automatically work. I have to open up the lid, go into my Nvidia display settings and choose my external monitor from the list to be the primary monitor. This is very annoying because I usually have my MBP under a monitor stand. If I set the external as primary, unplug the dvi cable and replug it in, I would have to go back and set the external yet again, as primary.

Is there any way to have it work like OSX? Just have the external display automatically work upon booting into windows? I hate that I have to unplug all the cables open up my mbp and set it to primary manually.

Help :(
 
Welcome to the joy of Windows.

Of curiosity: How are you cooling your laptop when it's both in use and closed?
 
neenja said:
Hmm windows 7 huh.. is it more bloat than winxp pro? I honestly only log onto bootcamp for gaming, thats it.

What is win+p? Windows key + P key? Or some kind of program?
Click to expand...

Win7 is in my experience better in every way to XP. XP is an old piece of crap.

Yes, Windows key + P. It activates a four option selector that lets you choose either external display only, MBP display only or both or clone the MBP display.
 
so if i set it to external display only.. and reboot, will it auto display on my external monitor?

i ask because, my laptop is always closed. when i boot into windows, i use bootchamp from osx which auto reboots into bootcamp for me.

so if it doesnt auto set it to external display, id have a tough time having to win+p if i cant see anything ;)

thanks for your help again!
 
Win7 might be better at automatically noticing the external monitor. If not, you can simply learn which of the Win+P shortcuts is which and which is selected by default, then you can just use the keyboard to click left or right a few times and hit enter.

UltraMon did similar things on XP but I don't think it had keyboard shortcuts? Maybe worth a try as well.
 
sounds like a plan. gonna get my hands on win7 and throw it on my bootcamp partition.

thanks again for the tip :)
 
I have windows 7 on bootcamp and an external monitor... it auto detects my monitor when its plugged in with the lid closed.
 
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