Solved How do I make external monitor as primary for laptop?

I posted a thread for quite some time about our laptop having issues with its own screen. Now it's fixed, I was wondering how we could make our external monitor as primary. The screen doesn't work now but the laptop is usable.

We plugged in a VGA adapter to a monitor and it shows up. It starts on the "Welcome" screen. I would want to know how we can see from boot, the logo, "Windows is starting"(i think that was it), etc.


Thanks in advance.

On some laptops, if you have an external screen plugged in, both the LCD screen and the External screen will show the POST, Starting Windows, and then the login screen. Some laptops do not, as the external could be only ran by the Operating system. I used to have an old Acer Aspire 5536 with Windows 7 Home Premium x64, and I would have an external screen plugged in for gaming. My system always booted from the primary, and never showed on the external until Windows was booted.

You can set it as your primary in Windows, but not as primary in the BIOS, unless there is a setting to change that.

Thanks for the reply.

Well, I guess we would stick on the external monitor for now. It's really disappointing how we couldn't see the BIOS and such. I am worried when we would have a problem pre-Welcome screen and not be able to fix it.

Now we got that sorted out, I have another problem.

We removed the laptop's monitor, and everything is working fine, but the wifi signal is significantly low. Did we put it back improperly? or is it related with its own monitor.

Thanks again.

WE SOLVED IT!!!

My Dad took out this little black and white wires from the monitor and put it on the motherboard where it originally was. Then we boot it up. And it worked. All 5 bars signal.

Thanks for your help

I was just going to ask if those wires were unplugged. Glad you solved it on your own Glad I could help.

Yeah it would be an issue if you ever had to get into Windows Recovery Environment if you ever have to do a restore of Windows and such.

Hi there

What was wrong with using Winkey +P you get choices - duplicate monitor, extend monitor, only use external monitor, only use PC monitor. Even in the PC monitor is Non Functional pressing the WIN + P key will give you the external monitor once you've got the right selection. There's only at the most 3 key presses to get what you need even if original monitor is not working.

Why BREAK a perfectly good laptop for the sake of a couple of keyboard presses -- also you will be hosed up if you want to MOVE the laptop or take it anywhere. Also if you need use recovery or even the BIOS you will have problems.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi Jimbo

You are absolutely correct. There is that option as well.

However, my friend had a HP G50 laptop with a burned out display. We plugged in an external monitor to keep it running. On his laptop, it was Function key, F5 to change monitor setup.

We moved the external monitor to be the primary #1 and shut off the LCD that was burned out.

What was weird, in our experience, is that during a cold boot, or restart, the laptop would never show the post or the bios on the external monitor, not even the Starting Windows for Windows 7 boot. But once it got to the welcome screen, it came on.

My Acer laptop was the same. The LCD worked, but I used the external for gaming, so I had to make the external primary with FN key-F5 on mine, and chose external as primary, then I would choose the LCD to be extended desktop using Catalyst Control Center. But always during a system reboot, it booted from the LCD, and not from the PC, which I thought was strange, which i know some laptops boot from PC monitors set as primary. I've also seen some laptops duplicate the displays during boot.

But that's certainly an option to try, Winkey-p, or whatever function key to change displays.

Could be possible we had bad hardware in our laptops, but I know each laptop is different.