Two monitors in Windows XP

K

K.A.K

Bit poster
I am just about to order Parallels Desktop for my new MacBook Air.

However a working collegue just told me to be aware of the fact that Parallels doesn't support dual-screens in WinXP.

Since this is something I need every once and then... can anyone confirm this unfortunate condition :/ ?

If so, is there a possibility around that in running WinXP from BootCamp if I'd need dual screens and from Parallels if i dont? But it would need to be the "same" Windows installation I am loading in both cases (don't wanna install 2 x WinXP on top of all ;) ).


Thank for everybodys help there...
 
I can confirm that dual monitor setup works with PD 6 with XP as guest OS. I don't know if this changes when the VM is a Bootcamp original as my VM is not a Bootcamp one.
 
great to hear :)

How do you set it up though :/ ?

Could it be that you need an Apple Monitor then? I use my VGA-monitor with Apple's MiniDVI-to-VGA adaptor..
 
Did you mean that you wished to run an XP program from within Parallels displaying to both the external monitor and the AirBooks LCD Screen? If so I don't know how (or why!) you would do that.

FWIW I am running a dual-screen system with a 2010 MacBook connected to a 30" HP LP3065. Once the dual-screen hardware boots up on the Mac, I basically run the Parallels XP SP3 VM window on the HP monitor (just dragged it over and resized) at pretty well full-screen resolution, and then I use the MacBooks screen to run other programs.

With the HP's real-estate I can obviously open several windows at the same time from within Parallels - which is effectively a "quasi" multi-screen display from within XP. So for my scenario XP doesn't have any input into this dual-screen setup - it just runs on whatever the MacBook is displaying and can certainly handle high screen resolutions.

I suspect with Parallels you can only run XP in "a single window", so it is either on the external monitor OR the Airbooks screen. The Airbook won't drive the 30" screen (mission critical!), but I think it can output 1980 x ? pixels so with a good external monitor you should still be able to run multiple windows from XP.

BTW look up my earlier post on XP SP3 time zone glitch - it might answer your time question.
 
Parallels-wise, there are two settings necessary: First, in the VM's settings, go to the 'options' tab and to 'full screen' then. On the right side there's a checkbox 'use all displays in full screen' which should be checked.

Second, when you start the VM, go to the Parallels menu bar. There's another setting 'use all displays in full screen' in the 'view' menu which should be hooked corresponding to the first setting in the VM's options.

Now, when you chose 'full screen' in the 'view' menu, both displays are used in the way you set them up in the Mac OS X 'monitors' options (in the system settings menu).

There you specifiy whether the internal Laptop display and your external monitor show the same image (cloning) or one display is an extended desktop to the other. The menu on the main display (the one showing the OS X menu bar on the top) gives you the possibility to define the position of both displays to each other.

You see two rectangles symbolizing your displays, one for the internal, one for the external. Notice the small menu bar on one of them, that's the main monitor. Now, for example, if your laptop sits left of your external monitor, drag the laptop rectangle to that position with your mouse pointer. Assuming you want the external monitor to be your main display, drag the small menu bar from one rectangle to the other.

That's it. Now you can move your mouse pointer from one display to the other as you can with the application's windows. If you bring up your VM now and set it to full screen, the same extended destop settings are used within the VM: Main monitor is your external display, and the laptop sits left of it.

There's no Apple display needed for this. As I write this, I use the above settings with an Dell 2405 display. It even works with a video beamer, so with Powerpoint sessions within the VM I'm able to use Powerpoint's teacher mode that shows the slides on the main display and some more information on the internal display.
 
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