Dual Monitor & Extended Desktop

I run dual monitor through my laptop and extend my desktop to the second monitor. I know that you understand this but I am thinking out loud so bear with me. When I do this, only my wallpaper shows on the second screen. When I open PowerPoint and mess around with slide and configuration and things, still only my desktop appears. Now, when I RUN the slide show, all of a sudden, we see it on the screen playing. I understand that this is the way it works, I am just thinking out loud. My question is, how does the monitor know what to show on the second desktop and when? Why PPT playing? Why not the icons on my desktop. What triggers the second monitor, how can I configure it to shows particular other things I might want it to show? Here is a scenario for you, it shows PowerPoint slideshow in action but if I run PowerPoint Viewer because of the song list, it won't show on the second monitor. they both are playing .ppt. So, how does it know what to show and what NOT to show?

 

That would depend on what you drivers are set up to do. my nVidia card has an option for "full screen video" which makes anything on my primary monitor video go fullscreen on my TV (secondary monitor). You might wanna try looking at the driver details and see whats what.

 

Just drag it over. Any icon,window,etc you want over on the second monitor. That is how I run myWinDVD. Just remember to put it back on the primary monitor before you close it if you don' use the other monitor everytime.

 

the extended desktop is just extra display area tacked onto the top,sides,etc. of your primary display. Windows treats it as one display for all intents and purposes. If you drag it there, it will show it. Here's how mine looks. 15" lcd and 46" plasma TV thru RGB input

 

i will give it a shot, thanks

 

Thats just if you let windows manage it just like having a seperate monitor, which is what I do (I have mine set up to have Winamp with visualisation on my TV, so i can still see it without it getting in the way, its kinda kewl ) but you can have different modes.
Cloneview : shows the same thing out of the other monitor out as is on the primary monitor. People generally use this to record videos of the screen, e.g. on a tv show where you see a demonstration on how to do somthing, the'll be plugged into the TV out of the graphics card
DualView : Just lets windows treat the TV as an extra monitor
Horizonal Span : AFAIK this is the same as DualView, except the nvidia control panel sets up a horizonal setup automatically.
Vertical span : same as above, but vertical.

Oh and one other thing, in the Display settigns control panel you can move the second screen around, so you can control the interface between the two monitors. So, if like me you have a TV up above the monitor, you can have screen 2 start at the top of screen 1, so you just drag things "up" onto the TV screen.

 

...But powerpoint viewer runs full screen by default... how can I 'drag' that across to my other monitor?

I have only so far managed to find a permium add-in for PP viewer to enable showing on second monitor. i hear VB can handle interactions with it, so i would have thought thousands of simple VB based exes simply moving it over would be out there... but there aren't that i can find.