Windows 10 No Longer Displaying Duplicate Screen (kind of urgent)

GoForPro · 29 Jun 2016

Overview: Hey there, registered to ask this question since I'm in a bit of a bind. It concerns displaying duplicate screen on my laptop onto another screen via an HDMI cable. I need this for work and it has been fine in the past, but after trying to switch from a duplicate screen to an extended one, my laptop / Windows 10 no longer duplicates onto the second screen.

Laptop: I have Windows 10 on a Lenovo G50 with the standard Graphics Card and the likes that have come with it. I'm not sure how to check out what they are exactly, but I don't believe this is the cause of my issue, nor do I believe that my drivers are the issue, though I could be wrong.

What Happened: I had my laptop hooked up to my TV at home and it was fine, the HDMI and everything worked well and I was able to get good picture and sound. Curious about the settings on my laptop, I pressed the F10 key to see what other options I had. Seeing the extend option, I clicked on it and the screen on my TV immediately went black, no longer displaying my laptop. I tried to switch it back to the duplicate, but that simply didn't work. I've tried switching between various projection types (duplicate screen, extend, second screen and pc screen) and none of them seem to do anything different, except for second screen, which just causes my laptop screen to go black. Changing the resolution doesn't seem to do anything, and when I go into the display settings, I'm shown a blue box with a 1 | 2 (numbers and line or divider included). I can switch this to an extended screen but that gives me a blue box with a 1 in it and a gray box with a 2 in it. Clicking them doesn't seem to do anything for displaying it on a separate screen.

I am completely stumped here. I don't understand what I did to prevent this from working at all now, nor do I have any real world idea of how to fix it. I do need this for work, as I use my laptop for presentations and other media stuff where it is shown to large groups of people, and I am worried that if it is no longer displaying at home, it won't display at work. Please, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

PS. I'm not super tech savvy but I can generally follow along on any advice that's given.
PPS. If this isn't the proper forum for this just let me know where to post and I can do that (or if someone with the capacity to move the thread wanted to do so, it would be great).

GoForPro · 29 Jun 2016

Update: Well, I found the solution. Apparently waiting was what I had to do. Naturally.

I also switched off the surge protector that my second monitor / TV was hooked up to, then turned it back on. That might have fixed it but I can't really figure out why unless the graphics card got confused earlier, and resetting the power reset how my graphics card read my TV... I guess?

It's great that it's resolved at least, though I'm generally curious about A) what caused this and B) what was the solution, or rather, what should the solution have been.

PennylandMusic · 06 Apr 2017

Apparently this is a widespread problem that was making me tear my hair out. Duplicate screens was working OK - then it suddenly stopped. On the settings>customize your display page, under multiple displays, the "Show only on 1", "Show only on 2" and "Extend these displays" options were there and they worked OK, but the "Duplicate these displays" option was not there. My graphics driver was an Intel 4000. Updating it did not help. So I chatted with MS support on line and they pointed me towards choosing a different graphics driver - the basic MS graphics driver. Voila - it sorted the problem. The problem only arose about a week ago after a Win 10 automatic update and possibly after a Dell auto update and possible after an auto-update by Driver Detective - or a combination of all of them. So it's difficult to pinpoint the actual culprit. But MS support was superb and she fixed it.