I am using an XPS L702x laptop for school and am doing a lot with Excel and other programs that I need to be able to read all of them at one time but I have been noticing that it has been taking me more and more time to just switch between windows and stuff so I grabbed an old monitor we had around the house and bought an HDMI to DVI-D cable to connect it to my laptop.
When connected and both are turned on it shows "no signal" and when I disable the Intel HD 3000 graphics adapter it switches over to the monitor. I have checked the monitor on a second laptop (XPS 14 with an nvidia 8400 in it) and it worked fine with that, it both duplicated and extended the desktop without a problem.
My primary laptop is an XPS L702x with an Nvidia 555m GT which should easily be capable to run the main screen and a second monitor, however, it refuses to "detect" the second monitor without me disabling the main display. The monitor I am trying to connect to is an ACER p191w which isn't the new thing in the world, but it was laying around the house not beign used. I don't really want to buy a second display since I don't have the fund and because I think its less of a hardware issue and more of a setting issue. I am using windows 7 as well.
I have tried everything except a full reinstall of the OS (which is out of the question until Thanksgiving break). I have reinstalled both graphics drivers and I have tried downgrading the graphics drivers.
The last thing I could possibly think is that a windows update messed up some weird setting somewhere but maybe someone here has had a similar issue so I thought I would make a quick post asking for suggestions if anyone had one.
E: Forgot to mention, plugging my laptop into my tv (HDMI to HDMI) works fine. I can easily duplicate or extend the display. I dont think there is an issue with the wire because I just checked it on another Laptop (my moms Gateway thing) and it worked fine on there as well.