Controlling display behavior on close of laptop lid

tbyrne

New Member
Greetings,

I've recently started using a new (work) laptop that came loaded with Vista. My last laptop, which I had for about three years, was running Windows XP, and at the time I made the switch to the new machine, I was pretty comfortable with the way that the machine operated and with the way that I had the system configured.

I'm trying to keep an open mind with regard to Vista; I try hard not to be an OS bigot, since part of the reason I started working with computers was because I enjoyed learning new things and trying new approaches. I've encountered a few problems, the most troubling of which (from a long-term viability perspective) are VPN-related. A number of my customers use VPNs with client software or connection methods that do not support or play nice with Vista. For now, I have workaround solutions that I can use for those customers.

One of the more irritating problems is something I have not been able to find any information on - how can I control what happens to the displays connected to the laptop when I close the lid? When I'm in the office, I typically have an external monitor, which I've configured to extend my desktop to. I sometimes need to close the lid of the laptop, whether it's to connect something to the rear of the docking station, or to hide the display while I step away from the desk for a few minutes.

On the old XP laptop, this would simply turn off the LCD display; the external monitor remained unchanged. That's how I would like my new laptop to work. However, on this new Vista system, when I close the lid, the desktop on the LCD display suddenly gets transferred to the external monitor, sometimes with drastic changes in resolution that muck up the desktop arrangement that I've spent some time setting up.

I think I've got the resolution change problem eliminated, but how can I keep the laptop LCD display from getting transferred to the external monitor? I have not found any settings that would seem to control this.

I removed the Lenovo Presentation Manager software, thinking that it might be the culprit, but that has not changed the behavior.

Details of the laptop:
Lenovo Thinkpad T61p
Vista Business x32
4 GB RAM
NVidia Quadro FX 570M video adapter
ViewSonic VA2026w external LCD display

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ted
 

My Computer

Hi. Welcome, I'm a newbie too! Don't know if this is of any merit: I know on our Lenovo laptops in work you can change the display settings by holding down the Fn button and pressing F7 (on the laptop keyboard). This toggles the display window where you can specify how you want the displays to work. Seeing as you have uninstalled the Presentation Manager I don't know if this will still work. There is also a setting to control how the laptop works when the lid is closed. This can be found as follows: Control Panel > Power Management > Advanced Tab - Power buttons - When I close the lid...(Do nothing option). Don't know where it is in Vista though, sorry. I'm sure it's similar
Hope this helps!
 

My Computer

Hi,

I've got the power settings configured to do nothing, and that seems to have no effect. The Fn-F7 key combination does work w/o Presentation Manager; it cycles through each permutation of Laptop-External-Both displays.

Ted
 

My Computer

Type in powercfg.cpl,1. into command prompt or

Go to Start
Click on Control Panel
Power Options
Select Change Plan Settings
And Change Advanced Power Settings

and click on power buttons and lid
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, 3Ghz
    Motherboard
    Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI
    Memory
    4GB DRR II 800Mhz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 9600GT 512mb
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 500GB SATA II
Good news!! I found this workaround on Laptop close lid, and re open lid, Vista wont resume, screen is off/black - MSDN Forums

The ACPI Lid driver is the problem. Do a ctrl panel -> device manager -> system devices
right click ACPI Lid and select update driver software -> browse my computer -> let me pick from a list -> (uncheck show compatible hardware) and select volume manager (really which you select is not too important, provided it does not cause any ill side effects, volume manager was suggested above and caused no problem for me as well)

finish the wizard and restart and now closing the lid actually turns off the monitor and does nothing else hooray
 

My Computer

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