I had 2 external monitors IN ADDITION to my built in laptop monitor working perfectly on Windows 10 without any 3rd party software (or hardware), up until I updated my graphics drivers. After that I found I could only have 2 displays working at one time.
After a bit of searching (and found nothing), I tinkered with some settings until I found out how to ENABLE ALL 3 MONITORS to work again.
Just to clarify, I have Windows 10 on an ASUS R501VM laptop with HDMI & VGA output.
With both monitors plugged in, Windows display settings & Intel HD Graphics could only detect 1 external monitor at a time.
SOLUTION:
- Open "Control Panel"
- Select "Devices and Printers"
- You should see both external monitors being recognized.
- Right click the monitor that is currently not working and select "Display settings"
- From there you should be able to tick a box that says "Enable this display" or something similar.
- Click [Apply] and you should now have all 3 monitors working!
I hope this helps.
Note that if you're content with a 2 display solution, it might seem like Windows won't let you use two external monitors. However, most GPU config panels (including those for HP internal cards) will still allow you to change this by going through the Graphics Options. – Lilienthal – 2015-02-23T12:55:11.407
@Lilienthal, I'm not sure what you're talking about. I have two external monitors ((1) VGA and (2) DP to DVI via dock) connected to my laptop, controlled via Windows, works fine. http://i.stack.imgur.com/v7hif.png
– cp.engr – 2015-10-17T01:38:20.980@cp.engr Hence my use of "might". Some hardware configurations will apparently result in Windows 7 not allowing the use of two external monitor in its native monitor configuration client. – Lilienthal – 2015-10-17T10:53:58.020
2What laptop are you using? – jasonh – 2009-07-17T06:18:36.220
6I use a Lenoveo X60s and tried to attach a second external monitor using the Matrix DualHead2Go. Unfortunately the notebook was not able to drive those monitors at a resolution higher than 1024x768 (not enough RAM). Upon inspection I found that Matrox had that info on their product page! Mea Culpa! – lexu – 2009-07-19T05:32:24.587
video or system ram? – None – 2013-05-19T17:30:07.620