Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with projector and laptop

Laptop and projector need to play together nicely.

wile e — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:02:33 -0800

Managing a projector with a laptop at a different resolution. The short: classroom training sessions with a Dell laptop hooked up to a projector is giving me some issues, looking for advice on how to rectify the situation. Windows Vista Ultimate
Dell Vostro 1400 w/ embedded Intel video card (temporary, my Nvidia motherboard blew up, long story)
2gig Ram
2.0ghz Core 2 duo
VGA output

Half of my time is spent in a classroom training on how to use a particular software. The classroom changes weekly, so cannot give specs on the projector, but all are generic classroom projectors that take a VGA input on them.

When I hook up my laptop to the projector, it takes me out of my 1440x900 default resolution, and kicks me back to 800x600. If I try to change it back to 1440x900 it refuses as the projector cannot handle the resolution, even if I have it set up to not share my desktop. I can get it to work with 1280x768, but since this is not my default resolution, it annoys me to screw up all my settings on my laptop during the session.

So my question is this: Is there a way to better manage all of this, since I spend most of my time dealing with this? Are there programs to aid in this? I have briefly looked into Displayfusion and Ultramon, but they seem to be more aimed at permanent multi monitor setups. Whereas my situation tends to only be during 9-5 every other week or so.

It just seems the management utility that is in my laptop now cannot be the best thing. I would like to have some real control over what happens, not just resolution if possible. Like I would like to share certain windows on my screen with the projector, but not all.

Well anyway, if anybody has some insight into this, I would appreciate the help.

I will be checking this throughout the day, so any info I left out, feel free to ask and I will supply the answer if I have it.

Why doesn't my laptop like projectors?

robhuddles — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:27:53 -0800

What causes my laptop to freak out whenever I plug in a projector? I have a Toshiba Satellite P205-S667 laptop. It's running Windows Vista Home Premium. It uses the Mobile Intel 945 Express Chipset Family graphics driver.

On several occasions, my computer has completely freaked out if I hook it up to a projector. It starts by dropping the projector signal (last night, it was happening every few minutes), and then eventually progresses to completely freezing the computer, to the point that I have to press and hold the power button to turn it off to restart.

And then things get really fun. Sometimes it will restart fine, and then work for a few minutes before freaking out again. But others, Windows will refuse to boot up at all and take me into first the Startup Restore utility, and then System Restore.

This isn't specific to a single projector or even projector brand - it happened last night while using a very old InFocus, but it also occurred once while I was using a newish Dell projector and at least once on a Samsung.

I have checked to be sure that the graphics card driver is up-to-date. I tried turning off the Vista-esque features, such as the Sidebar and Aero. I've manually reset the screen resolution to match that of the projector. Last night, I even tried resetting the Theme to Windows Classic, but nothing seems to work.

Unfortunately, running my laptop with a projector is an important part of my job, so I really need help to figure out what's causing the problem and how I might fix it.

Vid problems on LCD projector

RockyChrysler — Wed, 11 May 2005 14:20:07 -0800

The school where I teach recently purchased a LCD projector and I'm having some trouble getting it to play video... [mi] It's a Hitachi cp-x328 and it seems to be working fine, until i try to play a video file (ie: avi, .mpg, vts type files) in windows media player or powerdvd. quicktime converts/plays the aforementioned files fine (vts, of course being the exception). but wmp and powerdvd just show a blank screen on the projector image, despite the fact that the laptop dispaly is showing the playback fine. all the other desktop features are still visible on the projector's display, but the video window is just black. the children will not accept this.

both the laptop and the projector are set to 60hz. the projector's set to auto select the video input type, but even when i manually switch to ntsc i still get no video playback. however, the projector's picking up the audio signal fine. what am i missing? the problem seems like it should be simple enough to solve, but i'm stumped.

Projectors

cedar — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:36:06 -0800

I'm in the process of writing a grant for a projector and laptop to run it. It's for a small rural fire department and the total budget is roughly 4.5k. I need two prices for each and know nothing about projectors -- I'm looking for a well regarded projector manufacturer and two good online retailers selling the brand. The laptop isn't an issue, I'll use Dell and IBM (I know there are better sources but these folks like names they've heard of).