The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    MBP: Setting External Monitor as Primary Display (XP)

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by hello, Jan 29, 2010.

  1. hello

    hello Notebook Consultant NBR Reviewer

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    113
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    This has been a problem for me ever since I got the 13" MBP in August 2009.
    I think I finally have a work around.

    *Not sure if people have found better ways to do, if they have then PLZZ let me know!

    First I went to NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL, and selected "Configure monitors independently". Laptop display will be you only option for a primary monitor. Click ok, and apply settings. Close the control Panel.

    Now, drag the windows taskbar from your laptop to your external monitor. Open NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL again, and you should then see something like this.
    [​IMG]
    My external is @ 1920x1080, and MBP at native 1280x800.
    Hit apply if you have to. (If your laptop screen is blank, adjust the brightness using F1/F2, that should bring up the laptop display)

    You will notice that the BenQ external is now listed as the primary monitor, while the secondary monitor is not detected. This is because the driver thinks of your laptop display as an "extension" of your primary!

    This worked for me, so I thought I'd post about it because I've been searching online and I hadn't found a solution yet!

    cheers!
     
    hello, Jan 29, 2010
    #1