Automatically change resolution when laptop is in dock

I have a ThinkPad running Windows XP with a monitor attached to its dock. When I dock the laptop, nothing happens; I have to go in to Display Properties and enable the external monitor, change its resolution, and set it to be the primary display.

Conversely, I set the laptop's display as primary and disable the external monitor when I eject it from the dock.

How can I make this work automatically? I take my laptop with me to meetings, and having to change resolutions manually several times a day is aggravating to say the least.

I've tried to set this up in the drivers and by using UltraMon, but without any success. Does anyone know of a script/tool that I can use to make this work?

Hank Scorpio

Posted 2011-06-23T18:17:02.263

Reputation: 43

Answers

On most ThinkPads, Fn+F7 will toggle through display modes to turn on/off external monitors. It should remember that when the external is lit, you want it to be the primary - so you've got this down to a few keystrokes. (You may need the OEM Hotkey or Presentation Director apps installed.)

Shinrai

Posted 2011-06-23T18:17:02.263

Reputation: 18 051

Thanks, installing the Presentation director app let me set up docked/undocked display profiles. The Presentation director tool in turn requires that a couple of other packages be installed, and it took a lot of fiddling around to figure out the dependencies. If anyone else wants to try this, I recommend downloading the System Update tool, and selecting the apps you want installed in there, rather than downloading and installing several different cryptically named files on your own. – Hank Scorpio – 2011-07-12T20:24:52.347

@Hank - Agreed, System Update is the way to go for this by a long shot. Glad it worked out okay for you - I didn't realize Presentation Director these days would do it FOR you, that's even easier than I'd expected. – Shinrai – 2011-07-12T20:37:40.343

You can change the screen resolution using the Win32 API: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms812499.aspx so a script/program can do that. The hard part is to constantly monitor the laptop status (docked/undocked) and fire the script when a change is detected. I don't own a Thinkpad so I don't know how would this be done.

vemv

Posted 2011-06-23T18:17:02.263

Reputation: 640