Help with multiple monitors

When I read somewhere that you should make sure your "system and/or display adapter supports multiple monitor setup", is that telling me that my initial AGP video card and/or my new PCI video cards might not be able to work in conjunction with another video card? I know that win98 has multiple monitor support, so that's not the issue. I'm just wondering how you might be able to tell beforehand whether a video card will work in a pc with 1, 2, or even 3 totally separate video cards? Would it say on the packaging box something like "THIS VIDEO CARD DOES NOT WORK IN MULTIPLE MONITOR SETUPS", or am I just getting confused with the tech lingo?

I'm using my win98 pc with the initial Nvidia TNT2 AGP video card and just added an ATI Xpert 128 pci card. It's working fine so far except like I said before that the mouse wheel won't scroll anymore. I actually have gotten some windows to save on my second monitor with a setup that I like, but it seems to have been a random occurrence b/c I can't seem to get certain windows to stick where I want them to for future bootup. Anyway, I wondering if I replace/return the Xpert card with a different Nvidia PCI card, that maybe by using two cards with the same manufacturer, I might bypass any of these small little glitches. Sorry for the rambling.

Advice?
 
Originally posted by syd697
When I read somewhere that you should make sure your "system and/or display adapter supports multiple monitor setup", is that telling me that my initial AGP video card and/or my new PCI video cards might not be able to work in conjunction with another video card? I know that win98 has multiple monitor support, so that's not the issue. I'm just wondering how you might be able to tell beforehand whether a video card will work in a pc with 1, 2, or even 3 totally separate video cards? Would it say on the packaging box something like "THIS VIDEO CARD DOES NOT WORK IN MULTIPLE MONITOR SETUPS", or am I just getting confused with the tech lingo?

I'm using my win98 pc with the initial Nvidia TNT2 AGP video card and just added an ATI Xpert 128 pci card. It's working fine so far except like I said before that the mouse wheel won't scroll anymore. I actually have gotten some windows to save on my second monitor with a setup that I like, but it seems to have been a random occurrence b/c I can't seem to get certain windows to stick where I want them to for future bootup. Anyway, I wondering if I replace/return the Xpert card with a different Nvidia PCI card, that maybe by using two cards with the same manufacturer, I might bypass any of these small little glitches. Sorry for the rambling.

Advice?
More...

Hey Syd,

1. Did you see my edit-add "just one more thing" in the post above?
2. Whether your card works in multiple setup is determined by the driver. All the newer ones should work. I use Xpert 128s myself and they work fine... 4 single monitor cards.
3. Definitely use multiple cards from the same manufacturer. Better yet if they both/all work on the same driver.

The comment about "making sure your system works with multiple monitors..." probably refers to dual and quad head cards. (You can run as many single monitor cards as you have available slots.) You cannot presume that if you have a dual/quad head card that you can add something else and it will all work fine. That's where you need to check with manufacturer.

Make sure you have the most current drivers and that you've run Norton One Button Checkup. The first time you run it, you'll be surprised at how many errors it reports. Even if it's only one, that could be your mouse problem... but I'll bet the first time OBC shows at least "10 errors".
 
I just added a second monitor to my Win98 setup. For my style of trading, its enough for me. I bought the Radeon 7500 video card from ATI for 130 bucks from Comp USA, installed it in 5 minutes and that was it. I got a second monitor from a family relative and that was that. 130 bucks for a 2 monitor setup. No problems, no hassle. Only problem is that if there comes a time where I do need to add more monitors, there is no room for additions. For now it works.
 
I am currently looking to upgrade from win 98 for stability issues. How painless is the upgrade to XP Pro? Am I at risk of losing info from the hard disk? All of my company accounting is stored on the system an I would hate to lose it!
 
Gnome,

Thanks again for the advice. I managed to get the mouse wheel to work after talking to the ATI tech guys. All it took was for me to go into control panel and tweak the mouse settings. Something must've got changed around when I initially installed the new ATI drivers. All's well now and everything works great. Maybe I'll go for a 3rd monitor now!
 
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