Sharing 1 monitor with 2 computers

Nuby1Canuby

Nuby1Canuby

Gawd
Joined
Mar 4, 2008
Messages
754
Any idea what would happen if both computers tried to access the monitor at the same time?

My wife's computer is connected to the left hand monitor with the VGA cable.
My computer is connected to the left hand monitor with the DVI cable, to a mini display port to DVI active adapter.
The other two monitors are connected to my computer with the DVI cables.

My wife doesn't use her computer when I am gaming so I can use all 3 monitors.
I have a profile setup to only use the two right hand monitors.
The trouble is when I turn on the computer it uses the two left hand monitors before it switches over.
It's fine coming out of sleep mode, so I just make sure the 2 computers aren't using the left hand monitor at the same time.
 
I'm guessing when you turn the computer on Windows isn't loaded yet so the drivers haven't kicked in telling it which monitors are active.

There really shouldn't be anything wrong with that though. A computer will go on with its merry business regardless of if the monitor displays what its doing or not.

Also, buy another monitor for your wife :p
 
If the monitor has a source selector, then nothing bad will happen, and you'll even be able to use the screen from each PC at the same time...just select the right source.
If the monitor doesn't have a source selector, then it will probably default to VGA, though if the second PC is off...then it won't matter. So anyways, to answer your question...nothing bad should happen.
 
I sort of had this problem a few days ago.

I left my computer on while i went to work, and when I turned the monitors on, ONLY the monitor connected via DP (native; mini DP -> DP on my u2410) showed a picture of my login screen. What I had to do was turn all the monitors in my eyefinity cluster OFF and then (since my computer had recovered from the monitor off state) turned them all on again to get my picture back.


another way to say it is;

turned monitors on; only DP connected monitor worked.

Turned all monitors off
shook mouse

turned monitors on.

monitors worked.
 
Thanks for the info, it's nice to know there is no chance of damaging the monitor. The monitor does have a source selector but it's currently just grabbing whatever computer is active, which is fine. I'll just keep making sure my gaming computer doesn't try to use the monitor if the other computer is active. I wouldn't want Eyefinity to get confused since it's working perfectly right now.
I'm surprised how clear the text is with the VGA cable, I was expecting it to be fuzzy.
 
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