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Hello I have a laptop 15' and was going to use 23' external monitor.

I attached it and they both were working fine. But what I wanted is just to use only one monitor and leave laptop's display to be turned off.

I couldn't find a way to do it and after playing with settings I turned first monitor off hoping that system decides to use the second one as main monitor.

However they both are now showing black.

I am having to detach my second monitor and restart my machine (from another terminal's console)

What I want..is just turn laptops monitor off and use 23' one when it's attached.

I would also be quite happy if you would tell me where does Ubuntu store settings about monitors.

I also would to at least to be able to use two monitors at the same time (i.e revoke my last change)

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    okay! I've found it in ~/.config/monitors.xml Just deleted that file and I reverted my changes.
    – bakytn
    Aug 1, 2011 at 11:45
  • Now I'm trying to make my second monitor to be default (main) monitor and leave laptop's monitor turned off.
    – bakytn
    Aug 1, 2011 at 11:46
  • So I drag and dropped the second monitor behind the laptop's monitor in Monitors tool and things seem worked. But I encountered another issues like the Dash is showing only on Laptop's display (when you press the Win key) also I'm seeing a black rectangle on the bottom and can't resize the window to have it bigger than 1600px (the width of frist monitor)
    – bakytn
    Aug 1, 2011 at 12:03
  • Set the external monitor as primary in minitors.xml but things are not showing good.
    – bakytn
    Aug 1, 2011 at 12:17

2 Answers 2

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If you are on 11.04 type monitor on unity launcher

Then you will see your monitors like this

enter image description here

If you want to turned of the laptop screen and use the external one jsut select the laptop monitor and then click on Off radio button. then click on apply

like this: enter image description here

Now you have only the external monitor.

Update - Replying to the comment below.

You should remove ~/.config/monitors.xml and try again.

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  • yes, I did exactly this. both monitors went off.
    – bakytn
    Aug 1, 2011 at 12:01
  • I also drag and dropped the second monitor behind the laptop and things seem worked. But I encountered another issues like the Dash is showing only on Laptop's display (when you press the Win key) also I'm seeing a black rectangle on the bottom and can't resize the window to have it bigger than 1600px (the width of frist monitor)
    – bakytn
    Aug 1, 2011 at 12:03
  • If you turned off the laptop monitor, the launcher doesn't show up on the external monitor?
    – Achu
    Aug 1, 2011 at 12:20
  • If I turn the laptop monitor off...all monitors are black and impossible to work.
    – bakytn
    Aug 1, 2011 at 12:32
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I had the same problem and google led me here. I was able to solve the problem by deleting ~/.config/monitors.xml and then used the display settings to turn laptop monitor off. And it worked.

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