Dual monitor cloning with Windows Vista
25 June 2009
When you plug a second monitor or TV into a Windows Vista computer it will notice the new hardware and will give you an option of how to use the new hardware.
Initially you will have the option to extend your desktop or to clone your desktop.
Extending your desktop
This is where your desktop is extended over both monitors and you can drag windows from the main computer/laptop over to the secondary monitor.
An advantage with this will be when hosting an event you can open files from your primary monitor and display them on the secondary monitor - this way the people you're hosting to won't see what you're doing on the primary monitor.
Cloning your desktop
Cloning your desktop is when the secondary monitor will display exactly the same as your primary monitor.
This is useful when you're teaching people how to use a piece of software or showing someone how to do something - everything you do will be seen by everyone who's also viewing the secondary monitor.
You can change your monitor settings by going to your desktop, right click, and from the menu click "Personalize".
Pick the link at the bottom of the list "Display Settings".
This will bring up another window where you can change your monitor's resolution, number of colours to use and also view a secondary monitor.
If you click on monitor 2 then it will show the settings for the other monitor - but the only way to make the secondary monitor active is to extend your desktop across the two of them.
Currently in Windows Vista there is no way to clone monitors.
nVidia has it's own firmware that allows you to set monitor cloning, but this is not ideal having to use a third party application in order to do something that Windows Vista should have built in anyway.
As of yet I have not heard how to configure monitor cloning for other graphics cards such as Radeon or any of the others.
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