Some people use a laptop as a desktop because the desktop had a large screen and would get higher video images and gaming experience. If you are using an external monitor on laptop for your Windows 10, maybe there is something you need to know or you may have these problems before.
How to connect an external monitor to a laptop in Windows 10
This is a common issue about using the monitor on a laptop. Because if you want to use the external monitor to replace the laptop screen, you need to connect it to the laptop first. And the following is the solution.
1. Please connect the monitor’s power cord to the outlet to make sure the monitor can work properly, and then turn on the monitor’s display switch.
2. Connect the monitor’s VGA cable to the laptop’s VGA port.
3. Press Win + P to open the project. And here are Windows 10 shortcuts you should know.
4. In the project, choose any of the options you want.
PC screen only mode it means you can only use the laptop screen.
Duplicate mode It means the laptop screen and external monitor can display the images and content synchronously.
extended mode it means you can move Windows 10 images from one to the other screen.
Second screen mode only It means the images can only be displayed on the external monitor. By choosing this mode, you can display images on the second screen. This mode is often used when the laptop is used as a desktop.
How to reset the resolution of the external monitor?
If you choose the external monitor to display images, you can set the high resolution to improve image performance. And if you want to use this, you need to connect the monitor to a laptop with second screen mode only. After setting this up, you can follow the steps below.
1. Right click on a blank desktop and choose Screen settings to open the basic system settings.
2. On multiple screens, choose Show only on 2 from the dropdown list.
After that, the system will automatically help recommend the best resolution for your monitor.
If you choose to Duplicate these displays, it will recommend the low resolution of both of your monitors.
If not, you can reset it yourself.
To reset monitor resolution, you need to choose a monitor first, and then set the scale and layout, resolution, orientation, etc.
Of course, some problems will occur when using the second monitor on the laptop. And the most common is that Windows 10 cannot detect the external monitor.
How to fix Windows 10 cannot detect extended monitor?
After connecting the monitor to the laptop, Windows 10 can detect your monitor. Under normal conditions, there will be 2 screens:
But if Windows 10 cannot recognize the second monitor, it will show below. Even if you click the button Detect , the result still does not detect another screen.
So if Windows 10 cannot detect the second monitor, you can fix it by updating your graphics driver.
Update the Graphcis driver in Device Manager:
1. Open the device administrator .
2. Expand the Display adapters .
3. Right-click on the Graphic card > update driver to update the graphics driver to the latest version.
After that, restart your computer to update the graphics card driver.
If this cannot help you solve the problem, you can try to download the latest version of the graphic driver with the help of professional driver update tool or from the official site to install the graphic driver manually.
Update display driver automatically:
driver booster can help you update graphic driver automatically. After scanning the computer, it will recommend the latest drivers including graphic driver, then download and update it for you.
one. Download , install and run Driver Booster.
2. Then click Scan to allow Driver Booster to search for outdated, missing and corrupt device drivers.
If Windows 10 cannot detect your monitor, you may notice that your Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA graphics card driver is listed as needing to be updated in the Driver Booster scan results.
3. Discover the Display adapters and then choose Update the graphics driver.
Once Driver Booster has updated the display driver for Windows 10, your monitor will also be recognized. Or you can go to the official site to get the video card drivers you need.
After updating your graphic driver, Windows 10 can detect the second monitor easily.