The ability to spread your desktop across two or more monitors is a great benefit to anyone who needs to display many windows on the desktop at the same time and move the cursor freely from one screen to another. This could include:

1. Artists who design complex graphics and manipulations
2. Writers who need to cut and paste between documents or consult multiple research sources simultaneously

The following image shows how two monitors could be used simultaneously:

The primary monitor is the one recognized by the system BIOS at bootup. Even after you've installed one or more additional adapter cards and monitors, your primary monitor will still serve as the central focus of activity, which means that logon screens and programs will continue to default to this monitor.

To be compatible with multiple monitor support, the display adapters must be PCI and/or AGP. You can use both an AGP and a PCI adapter together, but the PCI adapter usually must be configured as the primary adapter. Usually, each monitor will need to be supported by a separate adapter. However, there are special display adapters available that will allow the connection of more than one monitor. With these, the multiple display is configured via the hardware.

To install and configure additional monitors

1. Turn off your computer
2. Insert an additional PCI or AGP video adapter into an available slot
3. Plug your additional monitor into the card.
4. Turn on your computer. Windows 2000 will detect the new video adapter and install the appropriate drivers.
5. Once your computer has restarted, perform the steps shown in the following simulation.

Using the icons in the Display Properties dialog box, shown below

Drag the monitor icons to arrange them according to how you want them. The icon positions determine how you move items from one monitor to another. For example, in the example above, if you are using two monitors and you want to move items from one monitor to the other by dragging left and right, place the icons side by side. To move items between monitors by dragging up and down, place the icons one above the other.
Question: What is an alternate (and faster) method of accessing the Display Properties dialog box, other than

Start | Settings | Control Panel | Display?

Answer: Right-click any empty space on the desktop and select Properties.
In the next lesson, you will learn how to arrange multiple monitors.