dual monitors question

[farley89hd]

I successfully setup a dual monitor system on a w/98 pc with about 430 mhz and 128 ram.

Both video cards are old and nothing special.

It's kinda freaky sliding the mouse from one screen to the other.

My Question:
When I start a Powerpoint slide show in Monitor #2 and it is advancing forward through-out the show by it self fine, but once I start doing something on Monitor #1 like say a Word Doc. the slide show stops.

It it because my system is under powered?

[Calpitor]

It certainly sounds like it. Office applications are "resource hogs" to begin with. You may want to start off with adding more RAM and eliminating all TSRs.

[ProfessorU]

I have run PPPs and Word 2000 on a multimon rig no problems, so it can be done. By "stops" do you mean that it doesn't advance? If it's not the active application then it's probably a feature... PP stops running while another app has focus.

If you're using the video overlay on both monitors that could be the problem, too. You can't do 3d work or video work across 2+ monitors without a special card. Of course I've never seen a 3d word document so that's probably not it in this case.

[farley89hd]

I bet it's my old and cheap video cards. I was just fooling around and wanted to try it. I did upgrade the pc to 190 mbs of Ram, and no change. The powerpoint show which is set to advance on it's own stops when I do something on the other machine.

[Mahmud603]

It is probably by design since you cannot be watching a slideshow whilst you are undertaking another task on another monitor.

[flachebaq]

Actually, the problem you have is by design. When another program has the focus, PowerPoint stops until it has the focus again. Your video cards are fine, you just have to keep the PowerPoint in the front.

[farley89hd]

when you say keep the powerpoint in the front, do you mean On the "main" monitor or number one monitor?

[Calpitor]

No what he means is that once you start working on another application, in whatever monitor, PowerPoint looses it focus (not physically) and because it is not the primary program it will stop running the PPT presentation. I don't believe if even using a dual processor setup would circumvent this.

[Dr.Gibbs]

It has nothing to do with processing power, memory, the monitor, or anything else. Powerpoint simply pauses its slideshows while it's not active. There's nothing you can do to stop that from happening

The "focus" is whatever window is selected on the task bar, or it can even be the taskbar itself or your desktop. This is the way the OS works, and even dual processors can't stop that from happening... it's not a matter of speed, it's just a matter of organization.

[slipe]

When the window is not active Powerpoint thinks it is minimized and stops advancing. nView gives you options of what determines which screen is active. I have it set for the mouse cursor – whichever window the cursor is in is the active one. It can be a bother at times but it seems to be the easiest.

[farley89hd]

thank everyone for their insight