[TroyKristoffer]

Okay, so really, I understand completely that I'm trying to fit a square into a circle here, but maybe if we geeks put our heads together, we can make it fit...

So, as an overview: I have one machine, 3 monitors and two rooms. Monitor 1 is in room A, and monitor 2 and 3 is in room B. All three monitors are hooked up the the one machine, via one Geforce 8800 GTX

Oh, did I mention that monitor 1 is widescreen and the other two are not? You knew this was going to be complicated didn't you?

You can probably guess where I'm going with this.

My wide screen is stretched, because the computer is displaying a non wide-screen resolution.

Here is a diagram of my current setup:


Basically, monitor 1 and 2 are the same portion of the desktop. That's what I want to happen, but as I said, the widescreen monitor is the one stretching. I'd rather monitor two be squashed.

So... I sort of know what's happening, but I don't know if it's possible to fix it. Basically, Windows seems to be recognizing the 1280x1024 monitor as THE monitor to base it's resolution off of, because when I change the resolution for that monitor (there are only two monitors recognized by Windows, which is what I expected) it doesn't correct the resolution on monitor 1. When I change it to a widescreen resolution it simply makes the display field bigger than the monitor, but it is still stretched. For example: I can move my mouse the edge of the screen and the screen scrolls over to the end of the display field.

Anyway, I guess the first option would be figuring out how to get Windows to recognize the widescreen as the dominant monitor.

I can't hook 2 and 3 to the splitter, because then they'd be a mirrored display in the same room, which would be pointless. So, it has to be 1 and 2 on the splitter.

Okay, so there's my really ridiculous problem. Any ideas?

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AN Update:

So, I've swapped which ports on the splitter the monitors are plugged into and Windows now considers the widescreen monitor as the default resolution. The only problem now is that Monitor 2 shuts down completely when I'm in a widescreen resolution. I can at least switch between resolutions when changing rooms, which is better than before. At least my widescreen monitor is no longer squashed...

However, I'm still open to hearing any better solutions.

Thanks !

[TroyKristoffer]

AN Update:

So, I've swapped which ports on the splitter the monitors are plugged into and Windows now considers the widescreen monitor as the default resolution. The only problem now is that Monitor 2 shuts down completely when I'm in a widescreen resolution. I can at least switch between resolutions when changing rooms, which is better than before. At least my widescreen monitor is no longer squashed...

However, I'm still open to hearing any better solutions.

Thanks !

[stettybet0]

I believe the NVIDIA drivers have a way to "resize the desktop", which sounds like what you need when you say, "the display field [is] bigger than the monitor." I'm posting from my phone now, so I can't give any specific directions (the setting is somewhere in the NVIDIA Control Panel), but if you can't find it, I'll be able to guide you when I get to my computer later today.

[Digerati]

Check out UltraMon - it is not free, but lets you choose different resolutions for each monitor. I think you need a another graphics card to do this right, but I don't think anything will allow you to have different resolutions through a splitter. A cheap PCI would do the trick.

[TroyKristoffer]

Yup, I've been using Ultramon for years! Great great program! (Thanks for the suggestion anyway!) It still doesn't seem to know what to do with two monitors of different resolution on the same port. (which I probably expect otherwise...it's just not logical)

I think the best I'm going to get is to switch back and forth on resolutions when I switch rooms...which is pretty darn good.

I was thinking that I'd probably have to get a second video card too... I would love to have another GeForce 8800 GTX! (Well, actually I do have two, but one died, and I had to rig it to work because I don't have enough power in the case for two)

That would probably do it though, huh? And that would give me 3 desktops right? Not sharing two across three monitors?