Norm74656

A friend of mine has an Acer Aspire 5672WLMi and he wants to use a projector with it to do some presentations. When we hook the projector up and try and use the fn-F5 key to turn on the external display nothing happens, the projector just continues to project a black screen. Now the F5 key by itself works fine and the fn key in conjunction with other function keys works fine so I don't believe that this is any type of a problem with the keyboard. Also when the computer is booting up we can see the external display working up until Windows XP actually loads and the desktop appears on the lcd, then the external monitor cuts out.

This computer has an ATI x1400 graphics adapter and by going into the ATI control panel I can make it extend the desktop onto the external display and the projector then works but it's a real nuisance. He's not that technical and he really doesn't want to have to go into the ATI control panel everytime he wants to use the projector. There is no option in the ATI software to echo the desktop to the external display and the machine is running the latest ATI drivers from Acer. Also the x1400 drivers direct from ATI (which appear to be newer) won't install with the usual "You need to get the drivers from your manufacturer" nonsense.

Has anyone every seen a problem like this and have a fix?

Thanks,

- Norm