Connecting my laptop to my LCD tv. How??

[arobinson1984]

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

 

[stormy13]

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.

 

[Corazon]

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.

 

[arobinson1984]

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

 

[razy60]

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

 

[arobinson1984]

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

Andy

 

[razy60]

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.