KVM Dual/Single Monitors

Hello, My situation is that I have a Win7 with dual monitors and a Win XP box that I would like to have hooked up next to it. I would like for the XP box to use one of the monitors and the keyboard and mouse of the Win 7 box. And to do this I am attempting to use a TrendNet KVM switch. When I am on the Win 7 box everything works fine and I am able to switch over to the Win XP box with no issues. The problem arises though when I attempt to switch back to the Win 7 box, when I make the switch only one monitor comes up. I am able to make the second monitor come back on by going to the screen settings and pressing the detect button. After I do everything works fine again. What I am wondering is if there is anyway to force to Win7 box to automatically detect the second monitor so that I do not have to reactivate it each time I switch back. Any thoughts, tips, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hello poket, Just to clarify, you have two computers and two monitors, but you want to share the keyboard and mouse?

I would like to share the keyboard mouse and one of the monitors with the XP computer.

Right, okay.

This isn't exactly a fix, more of an alternative.

When I used to do long stretches of coding I used to use Synergy to set up a multi-display work space. It's free and just works over your LAN, whether it's wireless or wired.

http://synergy-foss.org/

You just need to connect your Win7 computer to one monitor and the XP machine to the other and run the software.

Because it's sending data via LAN, try not to type any passwords if you're using WiFi. I'm not sure whether it's protected or encrypted, and it's probably a redundant precaution, but if you can use wired then use wired.

The other option is to use something like UltraVNC to remotely connect to the XP computer (without hooking it up to the second monitor), :

http://www.uvnc.com/

Unfortunately I haven't had any experience with the TrendNet KVM switch, so hopefully another tech might be able to solve any specific technical issues with it.


Hope that helps (a bit),

never used any type of switch, but i think i'd start with the display power options in win7, eg. make sure the os/video driver doesn't dim, power off the displays after x amount of minutes, disable the screen saver, etc. set all power options to off or do nothing and see if that makes any difference can you give us the exact model number of the switch too, please.

I tried using synergy before i went with the KVM switch the down side of synergy is that I would need a third monitor to make it work because the win 7 machine needs to use dual monitors where the win XP machine only needs one. The reason I cannot just hook up the xp machine with no monitor and remote into it is because it is being used to transfer CCTV from a dvr to dvds. When remoting in no video will display within the player that I must use. It will also not display video using logmein or teamviewer. So my problem comes back to either using a KVM switch or a third monitor. I went with a KVM switch because of cost and desk space. TRENDnet TK-209K 2-Port USB KVM Switch Kit w/ Audio is what I am using. I will try to find the power options for the video card to see if I can set them to always be active, this seems a likely way to get them going.