Detecting Dual Monitor

What video card?
What ports are on the video card?
Are you using direct monitor cables or converters?

Its the video card that came with the mini tower.  The video card has two DVI connections.  The Mini tower also has a vga connection on the back.  I'm using one DVI for monitor no.1.  I have monitor no. 2 plugged into the VGA connection mainly because i did'nt have a secong DVI cable and I don't need high quality resolution from monitor no. 2.  Not sure if that is why monitor no. 2 isn't getting a signal.  Do i need to be using the 2nd DVI connection for my no. 2 monitor?

I purcgased another DVI cable and the dual monitors worked.  I couldn't get it to recognise the second monitor using the VGA connection.  Go figure.

We have the same Dell Vostro 400 (Service Tag < ADMIN NOTE : Service tag removed per privacy policy >) come with a video card with one VGA and one DVI. The VGA connected monitor worked but the DVI connection wont recognize the 2nd monitor. Please help.

I run into the same problem.

I have a Dell Vostro 460 come with AMD RADEON HD 6450 HD card. The card has one VGA port and one DVI port. The VGA port works. The DVI port does not work. My second monitor has VGA cable, I use a VGA-to-DVI adaptor to connect the monitor to DVI port.

I followed Dell Support webpage "How to Setup Dual Monitors for Windows 7" till Step 2.4 "Click Detect". I clicked "Detect" many times, the second monitor just does not show up. The LED on the second monitor is on.

Please help.

I resolved the issue. I bought a DVI-D to DVI-D monitor cable. Then I connected the monitor DVI-D socket to the video card DVI-D socket. Then the second monitor works.

There is another problem. I have 4 Dell E197FP monitors. These monitors come with only one VGA socket, no DVI socket. Hence they cannot be used as the second monitor. I had to find an old monitor from storage as the second monitor.

AS I see, Dell needs two improvements:

1) Dell monitor should provide both VGA and DVI socket.

2) Dell should offer customer a graphic card that has two VGA sockets.

Also a splitter might work

DVI splitter

VGA splitter

I had to purchase two Belkin VGAs To DVI Cable DVI-I Single Link M- Hddb15 M - 3Meters - Beige to use two E176FP monitors with my XPS8300. Yours will just be the 19" versions of my monitor and so require again the two cables.

(www.amazon.co.uk/.../ref=sr_1_2)

Both monitors work perfectly with the ATI HD 5770 graphics card by directly plugging them in the DVI slot and I didn't change any settings.

Note for best experience with dual monitors, assuming extended desktop try using the Actual Window Manager 60 day free trial (www.actualtools.com/windowmanager). I was looking for a solution to getting 2 taskbars and I found it and love it. Its gives you the taskbar on both monitors and the ability to pin programs on either taskbar, to set what monitor a program opens in etc etc. Feels much better.

Also for the person with only one DVI slot a splitter (below) and two of the cables (above) are likely to work.

Adaptor/spliter may not work.

There are 3 types of DVI ports: DVI-A, DVI-D and DVI-I.

DVI-I can process both digital and analog signal. So it can use adapter/spliter to accept VGA monitor. My previous Dell XPS worked this way.

DVI-D (e.g. AMD RADEON HD 6450) handles only digital signal. Adapter/spliter will not work. One has to have a monitor with DVI socket to match DVI-D graphic card socket.

I have the same problem now, actually I can get image on my No.2  monitor, but I can not detect it. That's wired, and I use the DVI splitter for two monitor. So, how can I setup the second monitor? And by the way, can you tell me where do you find the DVI splitter. Thanks.

Sometimes, if the resolution is not properly set, the second monitor does not work. Go to Control Panel | Display | Adjust Resolution. Make sure the resolution of your second monitor is set to the same as your first monitor.

To buy a DVI spliter, you may google "monitor adaptor". That's how I found them.