P3421W, keyboard/mouse switch only, not video?

Question

I recently purchased a P3421W, and am enjoying it immensely. However, I'm stumped on a specific use case scenario. I have a personal PC and work laptop hooked up to the P3421W. I also have a second monitor dedicated to my personal PC.

I understand that when in PbP or PiP mode, I can create a key combo to switch which system is being controlled by the kbd and mouse, without any change to video.

However, I often find myself running the P3421 as my dedicated work screen, and my personal PC on my secondary screen only. In this case, I'd love to be able to hot switch JUST my kbd and mouse, not my video.

I can do it in PbP mode, what about in this use case?

jphughan · Answer

@Kosama  There should be a USB Switch setting in the display’s onscreen menu interface that allows you to set which video input is associated with which USB upstream interface. In that case, when the display is only showing a single source, it should automatically switch over to using the USB upstream interface that you‘ve associated with that video input. If you’re looking for a way to show only your work PC on the display while having the USB devices available to your personal system, I’m not sure there’s a way to achieve that, at least not without deliberately setting up the video and USB relationships 'backwards', but that might create more inconveniences than it solves.

Kosama · Answer

Thanks for the reply, @jphughan , I appreciate it.

I suspect that you're right, but I thought I'd check with people more intelligent on the subject than I. I can easily do what I want with one of Dell's multi-system keyboard and mouse combos, and that's probably my best bet.

Throws a small wrinkle into the 10-15% of the time I do use the built-in KVM to switch my personal onto the P3421W, in that I'll likely be used to switching input to the systems on the KBD/M, but when I use the monitor's KVM, I'll need to remember to refrain (or you know, deal with the fraction-of-a-second inconvenience LOL).

Thanks for your insight!

jphughan · Answer

@Kosama  Happy to help.  This may or may not be appealing to you, but if you think you might want to switch USB peripherals independently on a regular basis, you might prefer a USB switch, like one of the products on this page.  IOGear is a solid vendor for KVMs, so this is a natural extension for them, and as you can see, they have variants that are USB 3.0 or just 2.0 as well as variants that support two host systems and four host systems.  Good luck!

Monitors

P3421W, keyboard/mouse switch only, not video?

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