Ultra Mon Dual-Monitor Question

[RKelly]

Hello,

I recently virtualized my computer (vista business) and am trying to get dual monitors working inside the virtual environment. I've got a dell laptop attached to a docking station with a secondary monitor attached to that. On my local pc, I am able to get dual monitors without problem using Ultra Mon, but in the virtual environment Ultra Mon does not pick up the secondary monitor. Any ideas why? I was told that Ultra Mon is a great app that works well with virtualized environments; and in fact a few co-workers use this with success in their virtual machines (but they've got desktops). I'm wondering if it's conflicting with the docking station? Any thoughts are greatly appreciated, thanks!

[jagabo]

The graphics device is virtualized in the VM. The virtualized device probably doesn't support dual displays. Are you coworkers using the same VM and same version? A lot of laptops don't support dual (simultaneous) displays.

For example, Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007 emulates a S3 Trio chipset -- no multiple displays there.

[RKelly]

Yes, we're all using vmware view client 3.0.1. On my local machine my laptop recognizes and supports dual monitors (I'm using a docking station) and ultramon recognizes my second monitor on the local machine as well. It's just that in the vm it doesn't recognize the second monitor.

[jagabo]

Looks like you've covered all the bases! I don't use vmware. Maybe someone else here can help...

[RKelly]

Well I didn't quite cover all the bases I should have; I figured this out. In case anybody else has a similar issue here goes:

First off Ultra Mon works well for dual monitor support in a virtual environment (I don't work for them or anything, just my observation)

What I failed to do is when connecting to my virtual machine is select the display as multi-monitor.

The other thing to make note is to make sure the screen resolutions are the same on both monitors. I doesn't appear to work well if the monitors are separate resolutions.

[rallynavvie]

I know this works with nVidia drivers running both displays but I'm not sure about using UltraMon for this. It might be the video chipset that the laptop is using. Is it using Intel GMA or something?

[jagabo]

Well I didn't quite cover all the bases I should have; I figured this out. In case anybody else has a similar issue here goes:

First off Ultra Mon works well for dual monitor support in a virtual environment (I don't work for them or anything, just my observation)

What I failed to do is when connecting to my virtual machine is select the display as multi-monitor.

The other thing to make note is to make sure the screen resolutions are the same on both monitors. I doesn't appear to work well if the monitors are separate resolutions.

Glad you got it worked out. And thanks for posting the solution. It will help someone in the future.

Are you using the free version of VMWare? I might check it out...