vga - Use laptop as second monitor for another laptop
2014-07
alan
This question already has an answer here:
- Can I use my laptop as a second monitor? 7 answers
Krishath
You can't do that if you haven't got a VIDEO-IN adapter which, usually, isn't provided on a laptop.
Sirex
You can make use of either VNC or remote desktop to do this. You'd need to form a network between the two machines, either using a crossover cable or a switch.
You may (should) find a normal ethernet cable might do the job also as a lot of equipment is auto-sensing for crossover situations these days and fixes the issue software side.
Getting remote desktop turned on or VNC installed without a monitor is your real issue. You're best bet is to plug an external monitor into the broken laptop, install VNC or enable remote desktop, and connect to it from the first laptop over a network connection. From that point on the external monitor is no longer needed.
But no, you can't connect a vga cable to the video-out port on your laptop and hope to stream video into it. It just doesn't work that way.
srboisvert
I'd like to use my old HP Pavillion dv4000 laptop as a media server by connecting it to a large monitor but I don't really want to have the laptop screen showing output.
The screen properties dialog doesn't let me disable the laptop screen and Fn-F5 doesn't seem to do anything at all.
Anybody know how to get this to work with this particular laptop?
srboisvert
Just me being ignorant. Turns out I needed to press the fn-f4 key once more as it cycles through three options - laptop only - laptop + VGA - VGA only. I was only pressing it once and expecting it to switch screens.