ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB -- Dual Monitor Setup

Hi, all ...

For future reference by me and possibly others having similar problems,
I am going to log, here, my progress in setting up a dual monitor
arrangement on a WinXP P4 machine using an ATI Radeon 9600. If anyone
has suggestions or links that will make this progress less painful than
it has been already, please let me know.

This morning, I received the DVI-VGA adapter that I bought from someone
on eBay. ATI didn't include this adapter with the card, so I had to
wait a week for this adapter before I could plug in my second monitor.
With this adapter, I was able to see a desktop on both monitors, which
was cool. The next question was how to use these two monitors.

I didn't know where to begin, so I right-clicked on the tray icon for
ATI Catalyst Control Center. The Control Center didn't seem to offer
any options that would get me up and running, so I went to its Help
Contents menu option. That opened an HTML file whose contents included
a Stretched Desktop option. That sounded like what I wanted to do, so
I clicked on that.

The Stretched Desktop option gave me an option to Enable Stretched
Desktop. The first instruction under that option was, "From the Tree
View pane click Stretched Desktop." Unfortunately, I didn't see any
references anywhere to Tree View pane. There was no option so called
in the Control Center itself. I looked in the Index and searched in
the Search option in this Help file, but no joy. I spent an hour
screwing around and basically getting nowhere, so I decided to go for a
bike ride. A car nearly hit me, and on this basis I felt empowered and
encouraged to return to my struggle with ATI, which seemed safer.

After screwing around for another half-hour, I figured out that Tree
View pane means the left side of the Catalyst Control Center. The
Control Center itself refers to Basic and Advanced views, but no Tree
view. This is the approach taken in its index as well. In the
Advanced view, there is a Graphics Settings tab. That is, in fact, the
only tab. It is all a bit mixed up.

Somewhere in this process, by accident, I discovered that I could drag
windows from one monitor to the other. It doesn't work when the
windows are maximized. But if you shrink them to normal size, you can
then left-click and hold on the top bar of the window, and with that
you can drag them around and then maximize them as desired. So I have
done some of that.

I also found out how to move my mouse cursor from one window to the
other. I thought I should be able to just mouse over to the right,
going from the left-hand monitor to the right-hand one, but it wasn't
working. Then, again by accident, I tried reaching the Indies by going
west and, you know, it worked. In other words, I had the monitors
reversed. Monitor 1 needs to be the one on the left. I changed the
order of them by clicking on something in Control Center. Can't
remember what.

Having both monitors up and running gives me a hell of a contrast
between what I have been staring at, all these years, and what I'm now
seeing on this nice 19" LCD monitor that I got for $150 after rebates.
It's almost literally night and day. The old thing -- a flat-panel 17"
CRT that seemed so big and bright when I got it is now just small and
dark. I decided I could use that old monitor to park some applications
that don't benefit quite so much from greater space to roam. Examples
include Winamp and Notepad. I'll use the bigger monitor for editing
and other things where I need to see what I'm doing. (My eyeballs are
going to be very happy. Maybe I'll go blind more slowly now.)

It also occurred to me that, instead of having 85 applications running
at once, I could take advantage of the multiple desktop feature.
They've been offering multiple desktops for years. For whatever
reason, though, the concept never grabbed me. But now I'm seeing that
maybe I can open up all of the applications that pertain to one project
in one desktop, and all the applications that pertain to another
project in another desktop, and so forth.

I tried it just now and I see that, unfortunately, it doesn't work
quite like I hoped. I was thinking that maybe I could set up Desktop 1
with Acrobat opened to File X, and I would set up Desktop 2 with
Acrobat opened to File Y. But that's not how it goes. File X opens up
in both desktops. So I'm not entirely sure how the desktop function is
supposed to work. I guess that was probably the net outcome last time
I tried fooling with desktops, in the deep and ancient past.

The other thing I don't know about desktops is whether it is possible
to copy features from one to another. For instance, I have a
half-dozen toolbars in Desktop 1. I'm not sure how to copy them to
Desktop 2. Ideally, I would find that desktop settings etc. are stored
in a folder somewhere, and all I have to do is to copy them to the
folder for another desktop.

I have that same question about copying toolbars from one monitor to
the other within Desktop 1. Right now, the toolbars are on crowded &
dark little Monitor 1. I want them on Monitor 2. At present, I don't
even have a taskbar in Monitor 2, so I can't figure out how to get the
toolbars over to Monitor 2 or even recreate them on Monitor 2.

Although ATI's help file didn't help me, I did discover that I can
create a sort of stretched desktop manually. I mean, if I am looking
at an application in a normal (i.e., not maximized) window on Monitor
1, I can left-click on its right border, where the mouse turns into a
two-headed arrow, and I can drag that right border across to Monitor 2.
So then I have a really wide window for that program.

When I am doing that dragging, or otherwise mousing around, I see that
sometimes the mouse gets stuck at the center line between the two
monitors. It doesn't want to go back to Monitor 1. I'm not sure why
not.

Dragging a window's right border to manually create a really wide
window seems to be a way to accomplish something like ATI intends with
its extra Maximize button, which appears next to the
Minimize/Maximize/Kill buttons at the top right corner of each window.
The dialog that pops up, when I click on that new Maximize button,
informs me that I must have a perfectly rectangular setup to use
Hydravision Maximize. Instead, when I manually drag right borders, I
get a screwy result where the left side of the application, in 17"
Monitor 1, appears at a lower height than the right side of the
application in 19% Monitor 2.

Just now, as I was retracing my steps, so as to write this down
correctly, I tried switching to Basic View. This opened up a wizard
that offered to "setup my display configuration." I tried it. It
didn't add anything to what I had already figured out. Apparently ATI
requires your "Main" monitor to be your left-hand monitor -- which
doesn't work in my case because of the physical layout of my workspace.
I want the right-hand monitor to be the main one. So possibly I will
not be able to install toolbars on the right-hand monitor.

That's as far as I've gotten right now.

Well, I'm not going to respond to your entire post, because I'm not really
sure if you had a question. But I will suggest you look into an application
called Ultramon. As far as I'm concerned, it's a "must-have" if you use
multiple monitors. There's probably other applications like it, but that's
my choice.

Clint

"Ray" wrote in message
ups.com...
Hi, all ...

For future reference by me and possibly others having similar problems,
I am going to log, here, my progress in setting up a dual monitor
arrangement on a WinXP P4 machine using an ATI Radeon 9600. If anyone
has suggestions or links that will make this progress less painful than
it has been already, please let me know.

This morning, I received the DVI-VGA adapter that I bought from someone
on eBay. ATI didn't include this adapter with the card, so I had to
wait a week for this adapter before I could plug in my second monitor.
With this adapter, I was able to see a desktop on both monitors, which
was cool. The next question was how to use these two monitors.

I didn't know where to begin, so I right-clicked on the tray icon for
ATI Catalyst Control Center. The Control Center didn't seem to offer
any options that would get me up and running, so I went to its Help
Contents menu option. That opened an HTML file whose contents included
a Stretched Desktop option. That sounded like what I wanted to do, so
I clicked on that.

The Stretched Desktop option gave me an option to Enable Stretched
Desktop. The first instruction under that option was, "From the Tree
View pane click Stretched Desktop." Unfortunately, I didn't see any
references anywhere to Tree View pane. There was no option so called
in the Control Center itself. I looked in the Index and searched in
the Search option in this Help file, but no joy. I spent an hour
screwing around and basically getting nowhere, so I decided to go for a
bike ride. A car nearly hit me, and on this basis I felt empowered and
encouraged to return to my struggle with ATI, which seemed safer.

After screwing around for another half-hour, I figured out that Tree
View pane means the left side of the Catalyst Control Center. The
Control Center itself refers to Basic and Advanced views, but no Tree
view. This is the approach taken in its index as well. In the
Advanced view, there is a Graphics Settings tab. That is, in fact, the
only tab. It is all a bit mixed up.

Somewhere in this process, by accident, I discovered that I could drag
windows from one monitor to the other. It doesn't work when the
windows are maximized. But if you shrink them to normal size, you can
then left-click and hold on the top bar of the window, and with that
you can drag them around and then maximize them as desired. So I have
done some of that.

I also found out how to move my mouse cursor from one window to the
other. I thought I should be able to just mouse over to the right,
going from the left-hand monitor to the right-hand one, but it wasn't
working. Then, again by accident, I tried reaching the Indies by going
west and, you know, it worked. In other words, I had the monitors
reversed. Monitor 1 needs to be the one on the left. I changed the
order of them by clicking on something in Control Center. Can't
remember what.

Having both monitors up and running gives me a hell of a contrast
between what I have been staring at, all these years, and what I'm now
seeing on this nice 19" LCD monitor that I got for $150 after rebates.
It's almost literally night and day. The old thing -- a flat-panel 17"
CRT that seemed so big and bright when I got it is now just small and
dark. I decided I could use that old monitor to park some applications
that don't benefit quite so much from greater space to roam. Examples
include Winamp and Notepad. I'll use the bigger monitor for editing
and other things where I need to see what I'm doing. (My eyeballs are
going to be very happy. Maybe I'll go blind more slowly now.)

It also occurred to me that, instead of having 85 applications running
at once, I could take advantage of the multiple desktop feature.
They've been offering multiple desktops for years. For whatever
reason, though, the concept never grabbed me. But now I'm seeing that
maybe I can open up all of the applications that pertain to one project
in one desktop, and all the applications that pertain to another
project in another desktop, and so forth.

I tried it just now and I see that, unfortunately, it doesn't work
quite like I hoped. I was thinking that maybe I could set up Desktop 1
with Acrobat opened to File X, and I would set up Desktop 2 with
Acrobat opened to File Y. But that's not how it goes. File X opens up
in both desktops. So I'm not entirely sure how the desktop function is
supposed to work. I guess that was probably the net outcome last time
I tried fooling with desktops, in the deep and ancient past.

The other thing I don't know about desktops is whether it is possible
to copy features from one to another. For instance, I have a
half-dozen toolbars in Desktop 1. I'm not sure how to copy them to
Desktop 2. Ideally, I would find that desktop settings etc. are stored
in a folder somewhere, and all I have to do is to copy them to the
folder for another desktop.

I have that same question about copying toolbars from one monitor to
the other within Desktop 1. Right now, the toolbars are on crowded &
dark little Monitor 1. I want them on Monitor 2. At present, I don't
even have a taskbar in Monitor 2, so I can't figure out how to get the
toolbars over to Monitor 2 or even recreate them on Monitor 2.

Although ATI's help file didn't help me, I did discover that I can
create a sort of stretched desktop manually. I mean, if I am looking
at an application in a normal (i.e., not maximized) window on Monitor
1, I can left-click on its right border, where the mouse turns into a
two-headed arrow, and I can drag that right border across to Monitor 2.
So then I have a really wide window for that program.

When I am doing that dragging, or otherwise mousing around, I see that
sometimes the mouse gets stuck at the center line between the two
monitors. It doesn't want to go back to Monitor 1. I'm not sure why
not.

Dragging a window's right border to manually create a really wide
window seems to be a way to accomplish something like ATI intends with
its extra Maximize button, which appears next to the
Minimize/Maximize/Kill buttons at the top right corner of each window.
The dialog that pops up, when I click on that new Maximize button,
informs me that I must have a perfectly rectangular setup to use
Hydravision Maximize. Instead, when I manually drag right borders, I
get a screwy result where the left side of the application, in 17"
Monitor 1, appears at a lower height than the right side of the
application in 19% Monitor 2.

Just now, as I was retracing my steps, so as to write this down
correctly, I tried switching to Basic View. This opened up a wizard
that offered to "setup my display configuration." I tried it. It
didn't add anything to what I had already figured out. Apparently ATI
requires your "Main" monitor to be your left-hand monitor -- which
doesn't work in my case because of the physical layout of my workspace.
I want the right-hand monitor to be the main one. So possibly I will
not be able to install toolbars on the right-hand monitor.

That's as far as I've gotten right now.

Just now, as I was retracing my steps, so as to write this down
correctly, I tried switching to Basic View. This opened up a wizard
that offered to "setup my display configuration." I tried it. It
didn't add anything to what I had already figured out. Apparently ATI
requires your "Main" monitor to be your left-hand monitor -- which
doesn't work in my case because of the physical layout of my workspace.
I want the right-hand monitor to be the main one.

Further tinkering and completion of the basic wizard reveals that the
question about the arrangement of the monitors comes later in the
process. First they put all of your applications on the opposite
monitors from how you have it set up; they reverse the resolutions so
that you can barely see what you're doing; they ask you if this looks
good -- and then, to prove that they were just kidding, they give you a
chance to set the right-hand monitor to be your main monitor at long
last. (Sigh.) All's well that ends well, although all's better if it
ends sooner and with less confusion.

One funky artifact: the coolswitching dialog (i.e., switching
applications with the Alt-Tab key combination) opens up in the
secondary monitor, not the main monitor. So I have to turn my head
over to that other monitor every time I want to switch applications,
unless I want to go back to using the mouse every time I switch apps.
I'm open to ideas on how to get the coolswitching dialog to appear in
the primary monitor.

Another incidental foible: the weather alert slider in Forecastfox
(and probably other things as well) now appear primarily in the
secondary monitor, bleeding over to the primary monitor at a different
height. It's not a pretty picture.

Clint wrote:
Well, I'm not going to respond to your entire post, because I'm not really
sure if you had a question. But I will suggest you look into an application
called Ultramon. As far as I'm concerned, it's a "must-have" if you use
multiple monitors. There's probably other applications like it, but that's
my choice.

Thanks, Clint. Yeah, I have a number of questions in that post, but if
it's too long, no problem. I did notice some references to Ultramon
when I was browsing before posting, but I was hesitating to spend $40
for solutions that I hoped I could find via greater familiarity with
the included ATI software.

It was a little long. I think they have a trial version, if you want to
give it a whirl. And I think the Hydravision software from ATI is supposed
to perform similar functionality.

Clint

"Ray" wrote in message
oups.com...
Clint wrote:
Well, I'm not going to respond to your entire post, because I'm not
really
sure if you had a question. But I will suggest you look into an
application
called Ultramon. As far as I'm concerned, it's a "must-have" if you use
multiple monitors. There's probably other applications like it, but
that's
my choice.

Thanks, Clint. Yeah, I have a number of questions in that post, but if
it's too long, no problem. I did notice some references to Ultramon
when I was browsing before posting, but I was hesitating to spend $40
for solutions that I hoped I could find via greater familiarity with
the included ATI software.