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How to set an external display as primary in Windows Vista

I posted this on my work’s wiki but I wanted to post it here so I can remember how to do it for later.

If you have your external display plugged into your laptop push Win+X to bring up the Windows Mobility Center. Then click on the Connect display button.

This will bring up the New Display Detected screen.

With that window open select “Show my desktop on the external display only” and hit ok.

Your laptop monitor should turn off and the external display will show your start menu and anything else you had open on the laptop.

Now right click on the desktop and go to personalize.

Then go to Display settings and select “Extend the desktop onto this monitor”

Go here for more information.

http://msthings.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!BFE88543FF6C8C5F!218.entry

Let me know if you have any Vista tips in the comments.

How-to set a screensaver before login in Windows XP/Vista

I haven’t fully tested this for Vista yet but it has the same key as XP so I am assuming it works the same. This is very similar to the setting up a default wallpaper but you use the SCRNSAVE.EXE key instead of Wallpaper.

Browse the registry to

HKUS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Just change the SCRNSAVE.EXE key to wherever your .scr file is located. There is also options for setting if there is any screensaver, ScreenSaveActive, the time out, ScreenSaveTimeOut, and if the screensaver is secure which seems dumb to me since no one has logged into the computer yet, but whatever.