Solved Disable laptop monitor to run headless

[quadrplax]

Hello, I am in a bit of an interesting situation. I have a Vista machine I would like to run headless (my specs are accurate). It has a 1280x800 display, and I would like to run it at a higher resolution (ideally 1920x1080). The issue is, even when I boot it with the lid closed on a docking station, it still registers the internal display and won't let me set it any higher that that resolution. Custom Resolution Utility, editing the registry by hand, and installing CCC did not help. For some reason, the monitors section doesn't even show up in Device Manager so I can't uninstall the monitor driver. Is there any software solution to this problem?

 

[townsbg]

What do you mean by headless? As far as I know it is not possible to run a monitor at a higher resolution than it was designed for. That would literally be like taking an old CRT TV and making it run in high def. It's just not possible because it isn't designed for it.

 

[quadrplax]

Running headless meaning without a physical display connected. In this case it would still be connected (since it's a laptop) but I would like to disable the display so that the graphics driver does not know it's there and nothing would show if you opened the laptop. That way I can set it to run at a higher resolution, such as when connecting to the laptop with TeamViewer.

 

[townsbg]

I'm still not understanding what you want to do but it's more than a driver issue. It is a matter of what resolution the monitor is designed to run and you can't change that. All monitors are designed by the manufacturer to run at certain specs and you can't exceed that. The resolution has to do with the number of dots or pixels that the monitor has. If you have a program that requires a high resolution you will have to buy an external monitor.

 

[wither 3]

He mentioned Team Viewer. It sounds like he wants the laptop to act like a server for remote access from another system. In that scenario, it wouldn't matter what the resolution of his laptop is. Perhaps he's going to remotely run some piece of software that's on the laptop in which he can play video which has a higher resolution than his laptop display and see it remotely. He needs his graphics card driver to do that so disabling it wouldn't be effective. To me, he would have to disable the display. Maybe this will help-

How to Turn off ANY Laptop Monitor in Windows 7! - YouTube

 

[quadrplax]

wither 3 has the right idea. Unfortunately, the video linked requires the laptop to be connected to an external display. To do this, I would have to do something ridiculous like run a 15 foot VGA cable. That's why I'm hoping there's some sort of software solution to this.

 

[wither 3]

Why can't you use a wi-fi or Bluetooth connection and stream your video, if that's your intent?

We really don't know what you're physically trying to do.

 

[quadrplax]

I have some software running on the laptop which I would like to be able to leave running, even when my main computer is off. It would be much easier to manage the software if the resolution when I remoted in matched that of my main PC.

 

[townsbg]

Your system specs show Vista business. If that is what is on your laptop then you can turn on remote desktop on the laptop and use the remote desktop client on the main computer. When you run remote desktop you can match the resolution to any monitor connected to the computer you are connecting from, however you can't exceed it.

 

[quadrplax]

That does work quite well, actually. It's not ideal for me however since it does not keep the resolution high at all times, so windows get moved around and such, and I am limited with what remote desktop software I can use. I have discovered a solution though: The ZoneScreen driver works quite well on Vista, it even lets me disable the laptop's internal monitor which I could not do when connecting with a VGA cable.