Have an NVS 4200M card in your laptop? Here’s how to use the laptop screen as a 3rd monitor
Last year I was issued a new laptop with an nVidia NVS 4200M video card. I was able to to hook two monitors up to it through a docking station and use the laptop monitor itself, for a total of 3 monitors. Good times!
Recently, however, I had to get my machine reset so we could downgrade my Windows 7 Enterprise to Windows 7 Pro due to licensing issues. When I got it back, I could only get two monitors to work. Whenever I’d try to enable a 3rd, one of the other two would get disabled. Going into the nVidia control panel, it told me that my GPU only supported two displays. I knew this was false since it had previously been working! Thinking maybe it was just a driver issue, I updated to the latest nVidia drivers to the card, but to no avail.
After poking around some more I found the answer. There’s a setting in the BIOS that had apparently been reset when my machine was reconfigured. I just had to flip the flag back on to enable nVidia Optimus support, and suddenly I was able to use my laptop screen as a 3rd display again!
Since I know we tend to buy the same sorts of machines all at once, I figure there might be other people out there who have the same machine but haven’t been able to get three displays enabled. Hopefully this helps!
Build awesome things for fun.
Check out our current openings for your chance to make awesome things with creative, curious people.
You Might Also Like
