Dual-Monitors on Notebook PC?

OK, so I have a HDMI and VGA out port on my Notebook. I have tried using both on my two monitors but so far I haven’t been able to figure out how to put them both onto it and have them work together. So I am wondering if that is possible and how exactly to do it (which settings)? I've tried all of the function keys for display, but none of them do anything.

I am also wondering if it is possible to get the Notebook screen to NOT display the same as the other one (or the second external monitor)?

Anyway, the first display is a Samsung SyncMaster P2370HD and the second one is a Dell 17" (the old square LCD type).


Here are the full system specs. Thank you very much for any help!

Update: I tried following

Move windows between multiple monitors

But nothing happened - the screen went black, it showed Acer's default image and my mouse - no desktop screen. What should I do now?

Should I try putting the third (VGA) in and see what happens, maybe it will trigger it to work? Do I have to disaple the "Snap" feature? What???

I know at least ONE person has to know what's going on here... can walk me through it. Please???

Not going to happen. The GPU in your laptop is capable of running two displays as once, but one of them has to be the laptop screen itself. Reason being is that the GPU only has two RAMDAC's,

RAMDAC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

in it; one for the laptop screen, and the other is for both the HDMI and VGA port and can only use one of those two ports at a time.

For the most part to do what you're looking to do you would need something like this,

Newegg.com - ENCORE External USB Video Adapter 1920x1080 (DVI / VGA) ENMUV-2 USB to DVI Interface

to run the second monitor off of.

OK thank you for that. I'll have to look into it (and get a USB hub).

However, I did finally manage to figure out how to make the 23" and the Notebook's screen work how they are supposed to, messing with the Function keys again... that said, it looks TERRIBLE on the 23"!!! There's a 0.5" black border and everything just looks very wrong... it is tiny, and it seems like I am running a Windows 98 setup with 16-bit color. It's BAD! Any suggestions on how I can fix this? Shouldn't look like this at all over HDMI...

Alright cancel that. I have figured it all out now.

Do the little "Extend these monitors" thing, then screw around with the FN + F5 button until both of them show up. Then go into the HDTV settings to "Source List" and edit the HDMI name to PC using the "Tools" button and then apply those changes. After that do this to take care of the annoying black border problem.

Now all I need to do is make things just a touch bigger... because wow, it's all tiny and I have bad eyes! LOL!