Connecting my laptop to my LCD tv. How??

Hi all,

A few months ago I bought a new laptop after my desktop packed in and I can't get the laptop to connect to my LCD tv like I could with my old desktop, I'm guessing its a setting somewhere thats not quite right.

Anyway, the laptop is a dell xps17 which has a 3gb geforce 555m graphics card. When I connect the laptop to my samsung 40" LCD 1080p tv (not a 3d tv) via hdmi cable, I get the background/wallpaper appear on the tv but none of the desktop icons etc. I've tried setting it as an additional monitor, tried duplicate & extend settings by pressing windows key+P but nothing seems to work, I've also tried lowering the resolution right down as the laptop runs at 1600x900

Anybody got any ideas whats happening, or got a step by step guide on how to get it to work?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Andy

You tried dragging anything over to the TV? In extended mode (don't use clone/duplicate unless the resolutions are the same) you'll get nothing but the wallpaper until you drag something to the second screen.

You should have an nVidia Control Panel to adjust advanced videocard settings. This may be a better place to assign primary and secondary monitor or set up "clone" modes than the default Windows options.

Thanks for the replies guys.

I've just found the Nvidia control panel so will have a mess about with that and try get it to work.

Didnt realise I had to drag things to the 2nd screen as when I used to have my desktop, I plugged in the hdmi cable and it seemed to set itself up as a cloned screen, whatever I did on the desktop was mirrored on the LCD tv without having to drag anything etc.

I basically want to use the LCD as a second/mirrored screen for watching movies.

Andy

On the keyboard is there a F key that has an icon with either lcd/crt or picture of a tv and a monitor, you may have press the FN key to use it, you should then get all the options, lcd, projector etc.

Raz

yes razy60 there is but it just gives the same options as pressing windows key+P

Andy

does your tv have,
Full and dot to dot options(normally one of the remote keys), I have had to change from full to dot to dot(it may be called something else in your TV) as it makes the screen bleed off the edge quite a bit.