Enabling extended desktop = freezes/hangs

[machinist]

I am working on a laptop for our church, and we need extended desktop to run, so one person can choose the slides, and the projector, well, projects them

Anyway, so I go in to Display Properties and enable "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" after clicking monitor 2 above it. Voila it works - however - I then get constant lockups every few seconds and CPU hitting 100% As soon as I turn off extended desktop it settles back down again...
I am confused, I've googled and found nothing useful, I've reformatted and started from scratch, same problem.

Laptop specs :
Acer Aspire 3003LC
SiS M760GX onboard gfx
Win XP Home SP2 - all updates downloaded
I know the onboard gfx ain't all that but it should be perfectly sufficient to do what I want....
Any help/advice really, really appreciated as I need this baby up and running by Sunday !

Thanks

[arthurleung]

Try going into the BIOS and increase video memory available to the onboard graphics?

There might also be other multi-monitor settings in the BIOS.

[machinist]

Good call - trouble is, there are hardly any settings in the BIOS that are user-definable.......unless there's a shortcut key I don't know about to open up more settings ??

[kinesisx]

Hi, I had a similar problem and not finding any solutions on the net, I attempted to solve the issue myself. I finally found a solution which works. It's actually quite simple.

All you need to do is change your primary monitor (laptop monitor in my case) to 16-bit rather than 32-bit. I will tell you know, allocating more memory to your video card doesn't allow you to have 32-bit on both screens and you can't change the external to 16-bit. It just won't work. (Rather frustrating)

However, I will assume that it isn't a major issue if you are running a SIS M760GX and wasn't a major factor in purchasing your system/notebook.

Anyhow, hope that all helps. Cheers!