Using two monitors, one on board video, one on video card, is it possible to do?

Question

I have a dual monitor video card installed, one DVI plug one VGA plug. I also have a VGA plug on the motherboard.

Is it possible to use one VGA monitor on the video card and one VGA monitor on the 'on board' video built into the motherboard to have a dual monitor system this way?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

(neither monitor has a DVI in so I cannot use the other plug on the back of the video card)

Answer 1

Yes I have been doing it for years, both with onboard video and 2 cards, with nvidia and ATI mixed even.

In the BOIS settings there should be a choice of which video to boot with, or disabled, Make sure it is on, and change the bootup selection around to make sure each one that you actually have will work and the drivers work.

In display properties there should be a tab for "settings"
You can get to display properties in the control panel or clicking the right mouse button when the mouse is on your background screen, not on any windows or icons.
If you have both cards or a card and onboard connected, you should get a window that shows 2 monitors, 1 may be greyed out. You would click on it and there should be a checkbox below it that says "extend the desktop onto this monitor" and this should turn your monitor on.
There is another checkbox that says make this my main monitor, and you have to choose which one you want your start button to appear.
You can also move around the little monitor icons around to make one monitor to the left or the right of the other, so when you move your mouse across from one to the other it can pop up in the right space. When you click on each monitor you can set it's resolution size, and they don't have to be the same either. LCD screens have a particular resolution size that they work best at, which is listed in the owner's manual of each screen.

Hope this works

Answer 2

if you have video on the motherboard, you should disable it (in the BIOS) if you have an AGP or PCI-Express video card attached. The BIOS setup screen is reached by pressing F2 (or Delete) during startup. This is an important step.

Only for some older motherboards with on-board video could you attach a PCI graphics card for a second monitor. By today's standrads such solutions are not desirable.

If you have a dual-monitor video card, you should have no trouble attaching two monitors. Set up the one with the VGA cable as the primary monitor and attach the DVI port to the second monitor. If the second monitor does not have a DVI connector, get a DVI-VGA adapter from the manufacturer of your graphics card. If you have an ATI card, get an adapter from ATI. Check in the box - many ATI cards come with a DVI-VGA adapter.

Answer 3

no you can only use 1 at a time get a dvi to vga adapter