Warning. If you have no experience or no confidence working on electronic equipment you may want a PC technician to carry out the work. See my suggestions at the end of the article.
What follows is for a Windows PC running Windows 10 only.
I find having multiple displays makes my work much easier when I am developing products or updating fact sheets for members.
When doing my research I do a fair bit of copying and pasting. This is vastly easier if you have more than one screen. Also I can keep an eye on my emails without interrupting my work. When working on a remote computer in a recent employment it allowed me to access resources not via the Intranet on my additional screens.
OK. Those who are still with me.
If you have a laptop you can generally just connect an additional screen however with PCs it isn’t that simple. See my page CONNECTING A SECOND SCREEN TO YOUR LAPTOP.
You need to find out if your PC has a graphics card installed. The easiest way is to open the case and have a look. Do this with the PC turned off and the mains power cable disconnected. But see warning above if you are not tech savvy.
On my Dell PC you just operate a handle on on one side.
There will be one or two PCIe slots like those illustrated here. Please note the blue release tab on these. There might already be a card installed in which case this may be OK to drive 2 of your monitors. You will probably require a cable as shown below depending on the card in use.
If there is only one such slot then your only option would be a quad graphics card. You can get these but they are more expensive so I haven’t used these.
If all looks OK then you need to source 2 video cards and of course the additional monitors. Ensure cards purchased are not too wide and that they are compatible with Windows 10. Some older cards are not suitable as drivers are not available.
The picture shows an example of such a graphics card on eBay. I have not bought from this trader. I post the ad as an example only. Note the cables required to connect 2 monitors are included in the sale which is very convenient.
Check your screen’s input connections to ensure these are the correct cables. The VGA connector is coloured blue.
To remove to install cards there may be a latch similar to the one shown here. You need to operate the blue latch on the slot to remove a card.
With both cards installed and monitors connected reconnect the power lead and turn the computer.
Starting up will take longer than usual because you have changed hardware. There will probably be a message on one of your screen asking you to press f1.
By default all of your screens will show the same picture.
Open your control panel. See next picture
Select DISPLAY
then under MULTIPLE DISPLAYS select ‘extend desktop’
You can organise the screens in your preferred order.
If you have 4 in a line I recommend you make screen 2 or 3 your main display.
If you have this right then the cursor will travel straight across your monitors.
While viewing on your chosen main monitor tick box for Make this my main display
Obviously my Pc is different as I don’t have enough space for 4 across.
You can check the installation in Device manager
There should be 2 display adaptors and 4 displays
If there are no warning triangles all is good
If there is a triangle you should right click the item and upgrade the driver.
OK. Now if you didn’t feel you could do this I recommend you contact your local friendly PC person or contact one of the following for a quote.
www.checkatrade.com
www.trustatrader.com
You could get PC World or another large shop to do this work but I find these shops are significantly more expensive. Of course you could order your new PC with multiple display outputs installed.
PS I am writing these blogs as part of my training as an Internet Marketer. My trainer is John Thornhill and he is guiding me to create and sell digital products as well as promoting other people’s products as an affiliate marketer. We expect to be ready to launch in 60 days or so.
For more details please see below
