HDMI trouble when VGA connected

[Darken]

Hello everyone!

First of all i would like to thank everyone for the answers and help you share and i am new to this forum. I tried to search before making this thread but i havent found any answer that could help me.

I just bought 2 LCD monitors ( Acer and Asus) they all work perfectly But i have a problem, a huge one. The Asus monitor refuses to work when the VGA (acer) is connected and vice versa.

The Asus is a 23" LCD monitor, its connected via HDMI.
The Acer is a 18,5" LCD monitor, its connected via VGA.
My laptop is an Acer 7736, 2,20 GHZ, 4 GB RAM, 1GB graphic card from ATI Radeon.


So i beg you please to help me, i have tried everything possible, been trying for the last 7 hours and i even downloaded Ultramon but it doenst work either.

I only want them to work in same time, what can i do?

Here is the link, i even tried updating the drivers on the graphic card but nothing works.


Thanks in advance!!!

 

[Thorsen]

A lot of laptops do not have the ability to go to more than two monitors (Edit: this is including laptop as monitor). You can probably have both work if you close your laptop lid, otherwise, only the laptop and VGA or laptop and HDMI will work. (Edit: if you close laptop lid, the two monitors VGA and HDMI will work but only with laptop monitor closed)

I think there is a piece of hardware you can purchase that can turn a USB port into and external display adapter, but I don't know if it was GFX card specific or if your card needs or supports a particular piece.

My laptop suffers from this as well. I tried it and confirmed it after seeing issue on this forum a few weeks ago.

 

[Darken]

Here is one more picture


Imageshack - problem2mv.jpg

 

[Darken]

A lot of laptops do not have the ability to go to more than two monitors. You can probably have both work if you close your laptop lid, otherwise, only the laptop and VGA or laptop and HDMI will work. I have the same issue.

I think there is a piece of hardware you can purchase that can turn a USB port into and external display adapter, but I don't know if it was GFX card specific or if your card needs or supports a particular piece.

My laptop suffers from this as well. I tried it and confirmed it after seeing issue on this forum a few weeks ago.

Thanks for the answer!
That sounds bad, i wasted my money then but those who sold me these LCDs are the ones who sold me the laptop as well and they checked and said it will work.

Thanks for the reply though,

does anyone else know anything about this?

 

[stormy13]

To take what Thorsen said a bit further, the reason it won't work with two external monitors is that the video card only has two RAMDAC's on it,

RAMDAC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

with each one only being able to output to one display at a time, either digital or analogue, but not both at the same time. In the case of your laptop one of the RAMDAC's is running the laptop display and the other is for both the HDMI and VGA port, of which as I said only one at a time can be used.

 

[Thorsen]

Here is a good example of the Hardware to add another VGA screen:
StarTech.com USB VGA External Dual or Multi Monitor Video Adapter - High Resolution Graphics adapter

So you would use the Laptop Screen, HDMI out to the one monitor and then the adapter to allow the VGA monitor through the USB

Edit: I would check on this before purchasing to make sure it can actually solve this issue.

The limitation that dissallows you from using VGA and HDMI and laptop is on wiki somewhere I will post if I find it. It has to do with a limitation in the system architecture.

Edit: ^^^^^^ what Stormy said.

 

[mpcrsc562]

does anyone else know anything about this?

Thorsen is right.

EVGA | USB Devices | EVGA UV Plus+
EVGA UV Plus+ UV16 USB 2.0 Video Adapter - The EVGA UV Plus+ 16 Arrives - Legit Reviews

 

[Thorsen]

they checked and said it will work.

It should work if your laptop monitor lid is closed.

Edit: that might not be what you were requesting though. They might have tested it with the lid closed, but they should know about this limitation and should have advised you on it.

 

[stormy13]

The limitation that dissallows you from using VGA and HDMI and laptop is on wiki somewhere I will post if I find it. It has to do with a limitation in the system architecture.

It isn't just laptops, the same limitations apply to any video desktop card that isn't from the ATI HD 5xxx series of cards. Some of the Matrox cards as well as some of ATI's and Nvidia's professional range of cards can output to more than 2 monitors at a time.

 

[Darken]

Thanks alot for the replies everyone! I will have to bring back one of the monitors tomorrow.



Thanks again for the help! Much appreciated.

 

[Thorsen]

No problem Darken.

thanks for clarification on it not being laptop specific Stormy good info.

 

[stormy13]

You're both welcome.

From what I can see so far the only way you can do more than the laptop screen and one monitor is if the laptop has something from the ATI 54xx and up series of mobility graphics cards in it that support Eyefinity.