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Old 01-11-2009, 08:57 AM   #28
Rick Simon
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Join Date: Nov 2008
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Location: Michigan
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Originally posted by cjmaddy:
To not pay much attention to which is the "primary" and "secondary" monitor in a multi-screen system, is like burying your head in the sand.
Understanding the significance of how multi-monitors can/should be connected, can be key to avoiding and/or solving problems during testing.  
Sorry... I guess I didn't make my point clear. The words primary and secondary have little meaning in and of themselves. For instance, on this system I have 3 monitors, 2 video cards and I'm running WinXP. I can configure it so that the NVidia is the "primary" monitor in the BIOS, the ATI card has one output that it considers the "primary" and I can configure Windows to use the other ATI card output as its "primary". In a case like that, which one is "primary"?

Calling something "primary" or "secondary" in a multimonitor system means nothing unless you give some further context. In the above example, the NVidia card is "primary" if we're talking about which monitor will show the initial bootup screen(s) and would be used for accessing the BIOS. At the same time, the ATI secondary output would be the "primary" screen if we're talking about Windows and displaying the desktop. If I understand you correctly though, you would consider the other ATI output to be the "primary" since it is considered so by the card itself and the hardware supporting it.

Anyway, I'll shut up on the subject and let it rest now. My apologies for getting off topic here!
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