Video display on multiple monitors

A question to any and all XP SP2 users. The problem: If the notebook is left on after a certain amount of time Corel Presentations or PowerPoint when called upon to run a video file will do it BUT it won't display on the LCD or DLP projector. This happens during extended lulls is using it during a presentation and during say a lunchbreak that takes an hour.

I accidently discovered a solution. If I reboot the computer, the video will show up on the projector.

What I know. It doesn't matter whether I'm using my old Sony GRZ610 which has 1Gb RAM--or the Sager NP9890 which has 4GB RAM, or the Sager NP9261 which has 3GB RAM. It seems memory is somehow being unavailable but I don't really know if this is true or not. Can anyone tell me why it happens?

 

I moved this post to a new thread. You shouldn't hijack other people's threads with your own questions.

As a solution, videos will not play on non-primary displays with many drivers. I assume you just get a black spot on the projector display where the video is supposed to be playing, but it plays on your laptop's LCD? The solution is to make the external display your primary display, which is what rebooting does. Your computer is probably set to try external displays first, then the internal LCD, which is why the projector can display video after rebooting.

As for the memory in the Sager, are you using a 32bit version of XP or Vista? If so, that's why you only see 3GB of RAM available. To use 4GB, you need to use a 64bit operating system. If that's not your problem, please explain further. What do you mean memory is "somehow unavailable"? That's very vague and doesn't give us much to go off of.

 

You're right. Ignorantly, I didn't see a way to askmy quetsion so took the route I did know about. Apologies.

 

No worries. There's a "New Thread" button at the top of the thread list that you should use if you don't find your question answered in any other threads. It'll also get you a faster response in general.

 

My personal theory based on the fact that all three computers exhibit video on both their screen and the projector at first, if left on and unused say during presentations where we are engaged in a hands on activity for extended periods or go to lunch for an hour or so. When the video or next video is called upon, it won't show on the projector unless I reboot the computer. That suggests maybe the memory is somehow made unavailable. But again, I don't really know that. I'm guessing because reboot seems to solve the issue every time. Why does video on the projector work then suddenly doesn't?

 

It's possibly an issue with re-initializing the video drivers for the external display. You might be able to go into the Display Properties to reset it manually rather than rebooting, but that's about all you can do. That's just the way Windows works.

 

It may not actually be your computer, but the software that you are using for presentations and video (I only suggest this as you seem to have this problem with all 3 of your notebooks - the common thread may be using the same presentation software).

I am a heavy user of PPT and Presentations and I have a lot of videos hyperlinked within the presentation software. I use to have this black screen problem, irrespective of the notebook I was using, but only when using PPT (or WP Presentation), until I went into the graphic card settings and reduced the acceleration bar to about mid-way - sometimes, if you try to play a video within PPT you simply get a black screen, especially if PPT has been running for several hours - dont know why, but my colleagues report the same thing). Reducing the hardware acceleration corrects this problem and you can also watch the video on both the LCD and on your notebook screen.

Also, if you are using a power/performance utility (on my Asus for example, it's the Power4Gear utility), make sure that for the presentation format that the HD and monitor use are set to "NEVER go off" in the default settings - you may have the power utility setup in your notebooks set to a default of 60 minutes which means that after this period of time, the video and HD turn off by default. Usually the only way to get your LCD to work is then to reboot. After I reset my default settings for the presentation mode to never turn off HD and video, this problem went away for good - and this was happening on my old Dell and on my new Asus until I fiddled with the power management systems of both notebooks.

Try it, it may work.

 

Thank you. I will try your solution. Just a fast note to add to this. The problem as described doesn't show up when I'm using Skunklabs' LiquidMedia software. Strange.