External monitor issue

GerardThomas

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Hello everyone. I'm new to Linux and have installed mint on an old laptop to trial and it saved the laptop which was blue screen dead. I also installed Ubuntu on a newer laptop. All seems to work well except for the external monitor.
Staying in Ubuntu in software & updates/additional drivers does not show any video/graphics drivers at all. I've tried several things to rectify including reinstalling the drivers and installing older drivers in the terminal window. The drivers seem to load and install OK and I can see NVIDIA driver in the terminal window. Ubuntu is installed along side windows 10 and when I boot in windows the external monitor works fine.
I would really appreciate any advice to get the external monitor working.
cheers
 


Appreciate that it is a Lenovo but we need to know a model. Could be you need to set it in the bios to use an external monitor. See if your monitor is listed in the settings first under settings First.
 
Thanks the Lenovo is an ideapad-130
processor is AMD® A9-9425 radeon r5, 5 compute cores 2c+3g × 2
Graphics is by AMD® Stoney
Unfortunately, when the monitor is plugged in (HDMI) the settings window wont fully open. It doesnt matter if the monitor is switched on or off. Settings partially opens to the top left hand corner with the number 1 displayed. When I unplug the monitor the settings window opens
 
G'day Gerard and welcome to linux.org :)

Daz is 2 hours ahead of me (NZ) and has probably eaten his tea by now (;)), but I'm heading off for mine shortly.

I'll leave you in capable hands and I'll check in tomorrow.

We'll get you sorted (hope)

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz
 
Try reading this thread - though it is for Mint a Ubuntu based distro: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=312086
There may be info in here somewhere that helps to be honest I am not experienced at connecting monitors with HDMI, Did a search and came across this thread, as Wiz said someone amongst us will have an answer.. - Anyone else help here..... ??
 
Have you tried with no updated driver ?

In other words, go to driver manager, and finish with "No proprietary Drivers are in use"

I may be barking up the wrong tree here, but worth a shot
 
Hello everyone. Thank you for all of your support
Well this is a little embarrassing. I've tried for two weeks to get this external monitor running but nothing worked. It was confusing because it worked fine in Windows. I didn't think it was the monitor itself because I found a lot of people had a similar problem and Ubuntu couldn't seem to see any video propriety drivers.
I had a second large monitor that I had working on my camera security system and thought it was worth a try. Its an older HP square monitor with the old 15 pin plug. I plugged it into the old monitor with the same plug and it worked perfectly straight away on Mint.
The newer lap top doesn't have the old video plug so I got an adapter to HDMI and again Ubuntu saw the monitor straight away and its working fine.
The other monitor has been delegated to the camera system.
Thanks for all your help I appreciate it.
 
Well mate glad it is sorted - enjoy your os and monitor.
 
That's great news, Gerard :)

Also, Gerard, a method I was going to suggest had you not just given us the good news, was the use of a command called

xrandr

At Terminal, which you can open using the shortcut Ctrl-Alt-t in both Mint and Ubuntu, simply type

Code:
xrandr

I'll show you an example in the Spoiler (just click to open, click to close) of mine, which is only using the one screen, but gives you an idea

chris@Ulyana-Cinnamon-SSD:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 16384 x 16384
eDP-1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 381mm x 214mm
1920x1080 60.13*+ 60.01 59.97 59.96 59.93 48.07
1680x1050 59.95 59.88
1600x1024 60.17
1400x1050 59.98
1600x900 59.99 59.94 59.95 59.82
1280x1024 60.02
1440x900 59.89
1400x900 59.96 59.88
1280x960 60.00
1440x810 60.00 59.97
1368x768 59.88 59.85
1360x768 59.80 59.96
1280x800 59.99 59.97 59.81 59.91
1152x864 60.00
1280x720 60.00 59.99 59.86 59.74
1024x768 60.04 60.00
960x720 60.00
928x696 60.05
896x672 60.01
1024x576 59.95 59.96 59.90 59.82
960x600 59.93 60.00
960x540 59.96 59.99 59.63 59.82
800x600 60.00 60.32 56.25
840x525 60.01 59.88
864x486 59.92 59.57
800x512 60.17
700x525 59.98
800x450 59.95 59.82
640x512 60.02
720x450 59.89
700x450 59.96 59.88
640x480 60.00 59.94
720x405 59.51 58.99
684x384 59.88 59.85
680x384 59.80 59.96
640x400 59.88 59.98
576x432 60.06
640x360 59.86 59.83 59.84 59.32
512x384 60.00
512x288 60.00 59.92
480x270 59.63 59.82
400x300 60.32 56.34
432x243 59.92 59.57
320x240 60.05
360x202 59.51 59.13
320x180 59.84 59.32
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
chris@Ulyana-Cinnamon-SSD:~$

Note the entry at top with the asterisk, shows my resolution I am currently on, the rest are supported.

So when you have two monitors, you should be able to see the details.

xrandr can be used both as a tool for adding monitors and changing resolutions, and also as a diagnostic tool. You may wish to capture your current environment and copy the text output to a text file to save.

Enjoy

Wizard
 

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