Travelmate P214 - adding 2 external monitors

marcloage

I have a P214 for uni and its a good laptop for the purpose i need it for, but im trying to connect external monitors, 2 to be exact, which are HP Prodisplay P202. But im having some issues. I want to be able to use them as an extension of my desktop, as i need to have a lots of windows open and spreading them out would help greatly. The laptop always comes up as monitor one and the 2 external monitors as monitor 2. 

Is there anyway to either just use the 2 external monitors and not use the laptop screen or use all 3 screens at one time as one big screen?

Its no doubt going to be a silly setting i have overlooked. 

William_mk2

@marcloage

You can always connect the monitor to laptop using vga, dvi, hdmi cable and through the help of docking station if you have multiple monitors.

 

Please take a picture of the ports of laptop on your smartphone, take it to a nearby store and purchase the right docking station.

 

You can purchase a switch splitter.   It will be helpful if you have only one hdmi port on your computer and you need to use two hdmi ports. 

 

Kindly go through the details from link

 

https://www.recompute.com.au/blog/5-easy-ways-to-connect-a-laptop-to-a-monitor/

https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000801.htm

https://www.theverge.com/21436346/laptop-monitor-external-display-how-to-connect

https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/how-to-connect-two-monitors-to-a-laptop/

https://www.alphr.com/features/389164/how-to-connect-a-second-screen-to-your-laptop-1/

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/monitors-extended-desktop-3-check/



You can always purchase external usb adapter or docking station to connect multiple monitors.  


You can also try fn + f5 on the keyboard .   It switches the display output between the display screen, external monitor (if connected), and both.

billsey

Which P214 model do you have? It should be something like P214-xxx-xxxx. How are you hooking the two monitors to the system? It sounds like you might have daisy chained them?

marcloage

Sorry for the delay in responding. 

I had tried connecting the monitors via a VGA splitter, but this didn't work when i tried to extend the monitors. I then tried a VGA to HDMI cable as well as the VGA to VGA, HDMI didn't work, I then purchased a VGA to USB-C and this worked perfectly this morning, along with the VGA to VGA. 

billsey

Yes, a VGA splitter, if it does anything, will give exactly the same screen on both monitors, since there is only one video signal on a VGA port. Same thing with HDMI or DP. Some models of P214 (there have been literally hundreds of them, what with the different years, locales and builds) might have DP Alt mode on the USB-C or Thunderbolt port, and that could potentially drive two displays. Normally you would either use the HDMI port for one display and the USB-C/TB for a second, or use a dock that has it's own video generators to drive multiple displays.