2 monitors and screensavers

Ashma · 21 Dec 2009

Hello!

I have an external LCD monitor connected to my notebook via HDMI. I’d like to be able to turn off the laptop screen or make it go black or run a screensaver ONLY on it, while I’m working/watching a film on my external display. Going into my notebooks settings and toggling from 2 displays to 1, works but is not a process I want to do as frequently as I’m having to do now.

Basically I’d like to be able to turn on and off (or blackout the screen or run screensaver) my notebooks display, as quickly as possible, while not effecting whatever is going on, on the external display.

System:
Sony Vaio AR790 Notebook
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Samsung SyncMaster 2493HM LCD Display (connected via HDMI)

Kari · 22 Dec 2009

In my opinion, the fastest and easiest solution is just close the lid of your notebook. Right click power icon in notification area, choose Power Options. Click Choose what closing the lid does and set the value to Do nothing.

Just close the lid when you are watching a film on your external display.

Kari

smarteyeball · 22 Dec 2009

Ashma said:

Basically I’d like to be able to turn on and off (or blackout the screen or run screensaver) my notebooks display, as quickly as possible, while not effecting whatever is going on, on the external display.

As far as I am aware, what you want to do, cannot be done. You can run two different screensavers, but not work on one screen whilst the other is running a screensaver.

Jonathan_King · 22 Dec 2009

Sorry Ashma, smarteyeball is right. That is not possible, at least natively. The may be a third party app put there somewhere that will do that, and if you find one, please post back. Many people ask questions similar to that. It would be nice to get an answer.

Good luck!

Ashma · 22 Dec 2009

Thanks for the response guys!

Kari, there have been too many times where I'll unplug and close my laptop while moving it to another room and forget that its in sleep when lid is closed mode and then have to wake it up. Sure waking up in Win7 is quick but I like having the lid set to do nothing.

Well so far what I was able to come up with was a program called Blackout 1.0: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Miscellaneous/Blackout.shtml. I saved it to a folder I have setup for all my programs that don't have installs. Made a desktop shortcut for it and placed it in my True Launch Taskbar. So now when I'm watching a film or working on the external display, I can just click on the Blackout icon and it makes only my laptops display go black (with a small white text logo flashing slowly in the center). When I move my mouse back to my laptops screen and click, the screen comes back alive.

This is really great because I can type or click away on the external display but the blackout display on my notebook won't wake up until I move back to it. Only bug seems to be that after you activate Blackout and then wake up your screen, Blackout stays on the Taskbar but you can just right click and close it or use it again later to put the screen right back to sleep.

Only other option I'm toying with is UltraMon as the developer has given me instructions on installing the UltraMon screensaver in order to do some of what I’d like. So I'll see how that works out. I've been using UltraMon as well as DisplayFusion and even though DF seems to have more fans, I seem to favor UltraMon; will report back on all that later once I've made up my mind after more testing and tweaking.

Ash