Anyone else using an external display with a MacBook

D

Don Sullivan

Member
I just discovered a rather strange problem when I connected my MacBook up to my 23" ACD monitor. I'm also use a keyboard connected via USB to the display and then connecting through the DVI to ADC adapter.

The symptom is around switching between full screen and windowed display of the Windows XP desktop. When using this over the last couple of days on the MacBook everything was working just fine including the resolution swaps and all. Today I connected up to the larger display and I'm having all sorts of problems with the switching. I can get it to switch into full screen mode but I cannot get it to switch out no matter what I do. I tried it in mirrored mode as well as extended desktop mode and the symptoms are identical.

The only way I can get back to using OSX is to either force quit Paralles (not desirable) or choose Command-Q and then cancel the shutdown of Parallels.

Edit: Never mind, I just found the answer in another thread. Pilot-error on my part.
 
Last edited:
kitesurfer said:
Hi,

What is the answer, I have the same problem and cold not found anything on other posts.

thanks
Click to expand...

So ALT+ENTER (default) sequence didn't work for you ?
Please, provide some more info on this, wi will surely check this out.
 
I also have a MB Pro and an external HD monitor. The only difference is that I'm using a KVM switch as well as Virtue desktop manager...which I think would complicate matters more, but it doesn't.

I use the ALT + ENTER key combo to get back. Everything seems fine thus far.
 
I use Virtue Desktops too. Only oddity I've noticed is I have to alt+enter twice to get it out of full screen. The first alt+enter seems to have no effect.
 
I have a 30" HD display. There are three problems with using it:

1) Parallels only allows me to use 16 bit color at that resolution (2560x1600). Every resolution under that, including 2048x1536, allows 24 bit color.

2) If my windowed resolution is set to, say, 1280x800, and then I go to full screen mode, it will not, in fact, jump to 2560x1600 automatically---I have to do it myself. That may be related to problem #1.

3) So now let's say I'm set at 2560x1600, but I go back to windowed mode. Because I've had to set the resolution myself, it stays there, and doesn't switch back to 1280x800. That's not necessarily fatal. HOWEVER, if I then disconnect from the external display (so now my native resolution is 1440x900), and I try to go to full screen mode, Parallels gets wedged: the screen goes black, and it never readjusts to 1440x900. Sometimes I can manage to get my way out of it by doing Ctrl-Option or ALT-Enter but it's not reliable.
 
Just to be clear: in scenario #3 above, I stay at 2560x1600 resolution in windowed mode before trying to go to 1440x900 full-screen mode. In other words, the problem seems to be that the resolution has to go down, not up, to fit fullscreen.
 
wish list

I use Parallels with and without an ext. monitor and I prefer the windowed mode. I cannot stand a Mac or an Apple monitor looking like running windwos native on it ;)
I'd be happy Parallels would check the configuration on start of a VM and choose e.g. 1024x640 without ext. monitor and e.g. 1600x1000 on use witrh a 23 inch screen.
Would that be too much a wish?
Thanks, Martin
 
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