Please help me connect my laptop to my television

January 23, 2010 6:31 AM

Can anyone help me to connect my Asus laptop to my Samsung television for use as an external display?

The laptop is an Asus F5 running Windows 7 and the television is a Samsung LE40A686M. I'm using a VGA to VGA cable. What happens is as follows:

I connect the devices and switch the laptop on. The Asus and Windows 7 splash screens appear on the television screen without a problem. Once I get to the Windows log in screen however, the picture has gone from the television and remains only on the laptop. After log in I press Win+P to connect to an external display. The laptop recognises the television and I am able to set it as the only display. The laptop screen turns off but the television screen simply has a note saying 'Mode not supported'.

Just to confuse and frustrate me even more, I only installed Windows 7 a couple of months ago. Prior to that the laptop ran Vista and I had no problems using the same television as an external display.

Is Windows 7 the cause of this problem? Any help would be much appreciated as this is really starting to get on my tits now.

posted by jonnyploy to computers & internet (3 answers total)

The first thing I would try would be to lower the resolution in Windows before switching over to the external monitor. The TV may not support the resolution for which it is set.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 6:45 AM on January 23, 2010

Yeah. Set your display mode to mirrored so that the same picture appears on both displays, and then try different resolutions until you find one that works.

With an HDTV, your resolution might actually be too *low*. You'll probably want to use 1280x720, 1920x1080 or, in the case of some LCDs, 13xx by 768.
posted by Mwongozi at 7:38 AM on January 23, 2010

Thanks guys, I reduced the resolution and it's now working. I'm still a bit confused about the fact that I could use a higher resolution when using Vista, but hey-ho.
posted by jonnyploy at 12:15 AM on January 24, 2010