How do you get a second monitor to work?

Answer 1

First of all - you need a graphics card that will support two monitors. Many/most don't. But if yours does, just plug the second one in. If it's an HDMI connector, there's a decent chance your system will detect it and adjust your graphics settings automatically. If it's a VGA connection, you'll have to adjust your graphics settings manually.

For windows 7, right click on your desktop, and select "Screen Resolution"

After that you're going to have to scroll through the menu items to find the way to add the second display.

Answer 2

The exact method depends on the operating system, but here one way to do it for most Windows systems:

Connect the second monitor to an extra video port on the computer. If there is no extra port, then you will have to add one (how you do that depends on the computer so I can't go into that here)

Go to Control Panel

Left Click on Display

Change Display Settings

Choose the option (under multiple monitors) to extend the display to the second monitor - or to duplicate it if that is what you want.

If you want to change which monitor is the left and which is the right, just drag the representation of the one that is currently on the right over to the left of the one currently shown on the left.

Different versions of Windows have variations on other ways to reach the same screens. For example:

Windows XP:

Right click on the desktop

Left click on Properties

Windows 7:

Right click on the desktop

Right click on Screen Resolution

Go to the Settings tab

Select from the dropdown menu on Display to get multiple monitors

LINUX, UNIX, Macintosh, etc use different procedures. If you want to rephrase the question specific to one of those other operating systems, perhaps someone who is an expert on them can answer for them.