I checked the forums but didn't see any direct solution to what I'm running up against, so here goes:

I have a Dell inspiron that currently dual boots XP Pro and SuSE 10.2. I'm having difficulty getting dual displays working on the linux side of things. The graphics card is an nVidia geForce 440 Go and the drivers seem to be installed properly, but when I plug in a second display to the VGA port on the back of the machine all I get are blue lines across the second screen. In the display configuration dialogs I don't see any options for a second monitor which leads me to believe the blue lines are caused by an attempted cloning of my desktop onto the other monitor (the main desktop resolution is set to 1600 x 1200, the external only supports up to 1280 x 1024). I'm not sure how to get SuSE to allow me to set a separate resolution for the other monitor or get it to recognize that it is a separate display.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

--Dan

check your settings in sax2
this allows you to change your X settings
I don't remember off hand how to get to it from the menu but it's not that hard
however if you can't find it on the menu simply open a terminal and type sax2 and this will open the gui config tool for you

Thanks for the help bneal,

I checked the settings in sax2, but I can't find any way to get it to recognize the second display. On the monitor section of sax2 it shows tabs for displays, and on mine it only shows one. Then, on that tab, it shows me that my graphics card is the nVidia GeForce 440 Go, and it lets me choose the monitor type. I've tried several of the laptop display monitor choices listed for Dell, and several of them will support the 1600 x 1200 resolution I am using, but it never adds the second tab for a second display that should correspond to the VGA port. I'm not sure if I've missed something, or if it just doesn't read that VGA port as a potential monitor. Thanks again for the help,

--Dan

sorry to take so long to get back to you
as soon as you open sax2 on the main page there should be a button to configure dual-head in there is where you would find the setup for the second display
at least that's how it works for me but I'm using an ATI card not nVidia
you may also want to search for how to configure twinview
I don't use nVidia myself but there should be an option for it in the menu
not sure where it would be but that will vary depending on if you use KDE or Gnome
if you can't find it there try
in a terminal
this should be able to locate all nVidia's files then just make an educated guess as to which one is the config util most likely it will be in /usr/sbin/ or just /sbin

I'm making progress at this point at least. The commands you suggested don't seem to work (I get an error that they're unrecognized bash commands), but I did find an updated driver for my graphics card through nvidia's website. I've got the options for dual head now (before they were greyed out) but I am not sure what needs to be configured where. I've tried several different combinations of monitor settings to get it to give me 1600 x 1200 pixels on my main display and 1280 x 1024 pixels on the secondary, but I can't get it to display right. Every time I try I end up with a wrapped display in the main laptop monitor (the mouse rolls from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen like it's folded or off-center) and I only get display on the second monitor from time to time. Also, since I installed the new driver, the secondary display is my default display - if I turn off dual head mode it moves the display only to the second monitory. Little quirky, but I'll keep working at it. Let me know if you can think of anything else I should look for.

Also, and this may be part of the trouble, the monitor that I have as my second display is not one listed in the available monitors when I try to configure it - it's a Sony and my model is not listed under Sony.