E6400 and E-Port Plus Dual External Display Problem

I've got a co-worker that just got an E6400 and E-Port Plus docking station with 130W power supply. The machine is running 32-bit Windows XP with an nVidia Quadro NVS 160m and she has two Dell 2001FP monitors connected to the DVI ports on the docking station.

I can't seem to get dual displays on the external monitors. With the laptop closed and docked, the machine only recognizes one of the monitors that is plugged in to the dock. If I dock the laptop open, I can setup dual displays using one external monitor and the laptop screen.

I've searched through these forums and tried some of the other tips like updating the BIOS and video drivers, plugging one monitor into the analog port on the docking station, and switching the monitors around.

Does anyone have any other tips I could try (or links to threads I may have missed here - including anything buried in the gigantic e6400 owners thread)?

 

Same thing happened to me- If your not already (I wasn't...) try using the Nvidia control panel, there's a lot of options in there that solved it for me.

 

Anything particular? I was trying to use the nVidia CP. Maybe I didn't blunder across the appropriate setting...

 

Hmm....my settings under the tab "Set up multiple displays" are:

#1 configured independently from each other (dualview)
#2 select the 2 screens that you want to use (this sounds like the part where it may not recognize your screen properly)
#3 Choose the screen you want your task bar and start menu on (I think this is an "advanced setting")


This worked fine for me, let me know if the correct screens do not show up on #2. If not, check out the help icon directly to the right of #2 "My display is not shown in the list..."

Good luck!

 

You're correct, step #2 was the problem where it was not recognizing the second monitor.

Anyway, I finally got some time to fiddle with it and started by moving the good monitor to the second port the E-Port Plus. That worked fine, I could still dual display with the laptop screen. Then I swapped monitors, still failed no matter what port. So then I connected the second monitor with the cable from the first monitor and it worked. So then I used the second cable with the first monitor and it failed.

So the DVI cable seems to be the problem, though it works fine on another monitor in our lab (that's where I borrowed it from in the first place). So I replaced the "bad" DVI cable with a VGA cable (I didn't have another DVI cable handy).

So the final working configuration is:
Monitor #1 w/ VGA cable (from my desk drawer)
Monitor #2 w/ DVI cable (from monitor #1)

The non-working configurations were:
Anything w/ borrowed DVI cable
Monitor #2 w/ VGA cable

Thanks for your suggestions!