external monitor detection and setup

I have an external monitor hooked up and it is mirroring the display on my laptop monitor. But I want one large desktop. Going to Control Panel -> Adjust screen resolution shows an icon for just one monitor. Clicking detect or identify does nothing. When I first installed Windows 7 a few weeks ago I recall getting both 1 and 2 shown. Now I'm stuck. I have an ATI card on this machine. How do I enable the system to "see" both monitors?

Try pressing Windows key + P. You want the second option from the right. Also, I remember having to restart some computers after attaching the second monitor to get it to work, but that was with XP.

Problem solved. I just installed the ATI Catalyst 10.7 driver and used the Catalyst Control Center to configure everything. I would add that before installing the Catalyst driver, pressing Win + P did nothing. Now I get the clickable icons for display configurations.

Glad to hear you resolved the issue. Remember to come back if you ever need help with anything else