Second monitor doesn't work with the first

Question

I have a laptop and I wanted to add a second monitor. I used a VGA-to-HDMI converter to connect the monitor, since the laptop has only HDMI slot and the monitor only VGA.

The issue is, that whenever I try to use both at once (either duplicate or extend), only the first monitor works (the one of the laptop itself) and the second says "out of range". If I try to use only the second one, everything works just fine.

The frequencies are the same (60Hz), the resolutions are 1920:1080 (laptop) and 1360:768. I tried various settings of resolution, nothing works. My graphic card is a NVidia GeForce GTX 1050TI.

I am using Windows 10 as an OS. I tried the monitor with the convertor with another laptop and everything worked. The only thing I noticed which could be wrong is, that the active signal resolution stays always at 1920:1080, no matter the resolution and I didn't find any way to change this.

Also weird is that the NVidia control panel seems to completely ignore the display of the laptop and Intel graphics settings doesn't see the monitor I am trying to connect. The Control Panel does see both.

Answer 1

Somewhere in the connection chain between your laptop, the converter, and the monitor there is an incompatibility.

The software option available to you are to check for and install the most recent graphics drivers for your computer. That's it.

Otherwise, no matter how much you want this too-long chain to work, evidence suggests it will not.

The cheapest option will be to purchase a different converter. There may simply be some odd incompatibility with your current device and a different one will work just fine.

Personally, I'd look for a monitor with native HDMI support. The quality of image will be far superior, just about every monitor offers HDMI, and converters just add an extra link that can cause problems or fail.