Hardware Little help with 2 screens. (New built pc)

[Rick Astley]

Heyah !

So, first, i'll start to give you my two screens reference :
- One is a HP w2007v
- The other is a LG LED 19EN33

It's some pretty old stuff, but i was not doing something special with these with my old pc, since it was a good pc. Back in 2012.

Also they BOTH are VGA ports. In my old setup, i had to use one HDMI => VGA, and for my new PC, i need two since VGA is not a thing anymore.

Last thing, my new PC runs with a Radeon RX 580. To give an idea.


So here's my issue :

When I try to connect my second screen (the LG one), the HP one goes black screen, and even if i disconnect the LG one, no way to get the first screen to work again, and I do have to boot my PC again.

I'm almost sure it's because of being two quite old screens, and because of using adaptators for both, but I wanted to know if there was a solution since i'll be able to buy some new screens in like 2 months, and i'd need this 2 screens setups because of some personnal projects.

Any work around ?

Thanks !

 

[Hayato213]

Both monitors using VGA cable on both end?

 

[Rick Astley]

Yep, i use some adaptators like this one :

I thought buying two will just work fine, but it's not the case at all x_x

 

[Owenge]

What RX580 do you have?

 

[Rick Astley]

The Sapphire Nitro+ one o/

 

[Owenge]

The Sapphire Nitro+ one o/

Doesn’t that have 1 hdmi and 3 display ports?

 

[Hayato213]

Not all converter would work, if it doesn't work, you gotta play around with using a different cable, and different monitors. Doesnt help that the w2007v only have a vga input

 

[Owenge]

What I’m getting at is, maybe use 1 VGA to hdmi, and 1 VGA to DisplayPort

 

[Rick Astley]

So, yep two display port, but i only have vga converters in the hand x_x Wanted to check if i could mess with these before going for the two new screens (which are quite my next buying stuff, but just wanted to find a solution meanwhile)

Well it's quite old stuff for my old setup because meh, i didn't want to spend too much on this back then.

I guess my best bet is to do 1 HDMI + 1 Display, but it's really weird to have this kind of crash and not being able to get my screen back

Thanks both o/

 

[Youkai]

yeah this won't work by default but as far as I know you can do a workaround and just deactivate and reactivate the display driver which should result in both displays showing something.

My Grandpa has had pretty much the same issue so I put a small batch in his autostart which does exactly what I wrote up above ... since then everything works fine, just starting takes a little bit longer.

 

[Hayato213]

Is the PC picking up both monitor? maybe in the display setting it is disconnected.

 

[FAST6191]

Speculation completely out of my arse but are these devices the same brand or design?

Occasionally I have seen it in other things where cheapo Chinese devices (as HDMI-VGA is not a commonly needed thing then chances are this is that) use the same ID for everything, under the assumption nobody would ever need two. Someone then tries to use two and it ends up conflicting and something like the situation in the OP happens as a result.

Whether you can readily change the ID is a different matter -- some might have a dip switch for it, others might be burned in silicon, others will want someone to dump the code and reflash.

Similarly I don't know how dead VGA actually is these days (I still use it all the time but I mostly have older gear). Probably not going to be in many high end GPUs but there are still plenty of lower end or slightly older ones you could possibly stick in a secondary PCI slot (or even a 1x slot or something with an adapter) and they will have VGA (or DVI which supports VGA adapters).

Alternatively if the secondary screen does not need to be that fast updating you might try something fun like sticking a raspberry pi in there which is set to VNC (remote desktop if you can do it) into a virtual secondary monitor and then the HDMI-VGA thing goes into the pi.

 

[Rick Astley]

yeah this won't work by default but as far as I know you can do a workaround and just deactivate and reactivate the display driver which should result in both displays showing something.

My Grandpa has had pretty much the same issue so I put a small batch in his autostart which does exactly what I wrote up above ... since then everything works fine, just starting takes a little bit longer.

Well this could be a solution, i never touched that much my settings I'll have to check that tbh, i think i'll miss a lot haha.

Is the PC picking up both monitor? maybe in the display setting it is disconnected.

Same, i don't really know, I think he detects both if i get the back screen no ? Not really sure because i can't check once they are both connected.

Speculation completely out of my arse but are these devices the same brand or design?

Occasionally I have seen it in other things where cheapo Chinese devices (as HDMI-VGA is not a commonly needed thing then chances are this is that) use the same ID for everything, under the assumption nobody would ever need two. Someone then tries to use two and it ends up conflicting and something like the situation in the OP happens as a result.

Whether you can readily change the ID is a different matter -- some might have a dip switch for it, others might be burned in silicon, others will want someone to dump the code and reflash.

Similarly I don't know how dead VGA actually is these days (I still use it all the time but I mostly have older gear). Probably not going to be in many high end GPUs but there are still plenty of lower end or slightly older ones you could possibly stick in a secondary PCI slot (or even a 1x slot or something with an adapter) and they will have VGA (or DVI which supports VGA adapters).

Alternatively if the secondary screen does not need to be that fast updating you might try something fun like sticking a raspberry pi in there which is set to VNC (remote desktop if you can do it) into a virtual secondary monitor and then the HDMI-VGA thing goes into the pi.

Nice point ! I got them both in two stores from the same brand. The adapters are the SAME. Exactly. After i've no idea how could I edit that in a effective way, Not really good with my hands. But would be quite sad if it was the case.

Well i could just rebuy an adaptator for displayport to VGA but i'm quite sad to have bought this adaptator (which was quite expensive) for almost nothing. I just use it to connect my switch to my secondary screen T-T

Thanks all !

 

[FAST6191]

Well this could be a solution, i never touched that much my settings I'll have to check that tbh, i think i'll miss a lot haha.



Same, i don't really know, I think he detects both if i get the back screen no ? Not really sure because i can't check once they are both connected.



Nice point ! I got them both in two stores from the same brand. The adapters are the SAME. Exactly. After i've no idea how could I edit that in a effective way, Not really good with my hands. But would be quite sad if it was the case.

Well i could just rebuy an adaptator for displayport to VGA but i'm quite sad to have bought this adaptator (which was quite expensive) for almost nothing. I just use it to connect my switch to my secondary screen T-T

Thanks all !

You might be able to flog the adapter on. Quite a few security camera setups have VGA screens but modern boxes come with HDMI out. It is where I would typically have to install such a thing.

 

[Originality]

A quick and dirty solution is to buy a usb to VGA adapter. We’ve had to do that at work as some laptops only come with one HDMI port and we need to use USB to get the second screen to work.