Computer question

Hello! I just got my new computer, and was all happy etc. Then I got disappointed when I realized I can't seem to have both my regular monitor and my Wacom Cintic tablet plugged in at the same time. At the back of my computer, there are 2 ports that were covered by grey plastic plugs. Does that mean they can't be used? They look normal, but the computer won't detect my tablet when connecting to them (it's one HDMI and one DVI).

Is it possible that those covered up ports aren't connected to the motherboard? If yes, is there anything I can do about it, or am I screwed?

Thanks in advance. I feel so crippled, knowing so little about hardware.


Pics: x  x  x

They were covered up to protect them most likely. My graphics card had blue covers over all the ports.

My guess as to your problem is that you have a graphics card *and* a motherboard with integrated graphics. With the graphics card plugged in, *only* the video ports that belong to the graphics card will work, so you'll need to use thise rather than the video ports on your motherboard. I ran into this problem myself immediately after building my computer.

If the above scenario is the case, look for more ports around the one that works.

Edit: just saw the pic links i am blind. Try the ports in the middle panel, just below the big one (which is the motherboard). Third from left looks like HDMI. At least one to the left of that might be too but the shapes look a little off for HDMI.

Oh, I didn't even consider those. Gonna try it tomorrow (bedtime since I gotta get up early tomorrow morning). Also, I popped in the disc that comes with drivers for the motherboard and stuff. A lot of things seemed not to be installed yet. Like something named Intel Chipset Driver. Is it something I need? I didn't think of the disc at first, since I was promised a fully installed computer

You've definitely got a graphics card in your machine in addition to your motherboard which has integrated graphics. The motherboard is the bigger top panel and the graphics card is the lower two panels.

The Intel Chipset driver is for the integrated graphics, which is pointless due to the graphics card. It's good to have that available to install if and only if the graphics card dies though, as then you'd still be able to use the integrated graphics to its full potential (as opposed to very basic generic windows video drivers) until you replace the graphics card.

In a nutshell, Integrated graphics uses a combination of your CPU and system ram for graphics processing, which is inferior to having a dedicated GPU (aka a graphics card).

Oh okay. That clears that up, then XD So I finally got the computer to detect my tablet, using that "hidden" HDMI port you found. However, it now thinks of it as the main monitor, which means I can't calibrate the tablet (which sucks since I mainly need it for drawing, not as a monitor). Is there some way to switch which monitor is supposed to be my main? My regular monitor connects via DVI (or that smaller, blue port. It currently has an adapter so I can use the DVI socket).

should work with both windows 7 and 8, but im not sure about cintic's display infrastructure and stuff, however since it uses hdmi, it should be the same as extra monitor, hence iunno

Didn't look like that on my computer (Windows 10). Oh well :/ Anyway, I managed to solve the problem. I didn't realize I could specify on which monitor I wanted the calibration to be done. 

Thank you very much for your help, guys <3

Moontoon wrote:

Didn't look like that on my computer (Windows 10). Oh well :/

Does that mean you weren't able to change it to secondary? Having the tablet as primary is not ideal and would drive me nuts if it were me.

Windows 10 instructions

Looks pretty similar to one way to get to it in Windows 7. If for some reason you can't get to it by right clicking the desktop as King Cat suggested, I have no idea why they changed it.

Assuming you're still able to calibrate it, it might also be a good idea to set it to duplicate the display instead of extend, so you can see what you're doing on both the tablet and monitor. The setting to do that is on the same window.

EDIT: Nevermind, if the tablet cannot use the same resolution as your monitor then duplicate (also known as "clone") is a *terrible* idea as that would lock your monitor to the same resolution as the tablet.

Got it to work now \o/ Thanks again!

Glad you got it straightened out!

Yes, thank you!

So, since I already have a thread, I thought I'd ask if someone knows how to reinstall Windows on a computer with no OS disc available. It's my old computer that came with Vista back when I got it (it still has this sticker with the lincese key on it). I can only seem to find tutorials that involve using a disc.

I installed Windows 7 on it some time ago, but now that I'm going to sell the computer, I want it to be all clean and fresh :3

Thanks in advance!

You probably will have to contact the manufacturer of the laptop to get an OEM Vista CD sent to you. Or you can upgrade it to Win 10 by using your Vista product key.
Or you could obtain Vista in questionable ways <__<

I'm assuming either the old computer came with restore discs (which would be for Vista) or it has some sort of recovery partition on the hard drive which I also assume would be for Vista but I'm not very familiar with how recovery partitions work. If you still have the manuals that came with the computer you might want to check those.

You could use the recovery disks or the partition, or if you don't have either and leaving it on Windows 7 is acceptable, I know you could wipe it to a clean copy of Windows 7 as that's what's installed (but then the OEM sticker wouldn't match obviously). To restore to a clean copy of Windows 7 you would need to either use the Windows 7 disc if you have one or create a recovery disc from the computer itself.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/create-a-system-repair-disc

Considering you're going to sell this computer it's likely you already have, but you'll obviously want to copy any files you want to keep on to your new computer before doing this.

Can't find a partition, and I have no recovery disc. Also the Windows7 it has now is *cough*downloaded*cough*. I just thought it'd be easier to find a buyer if it's freshly installed with a legal version of Windows :/

Sent an email to the manufacturer. Hopefully they'll be able to help. Oh, and I've also transferred all the files I wanted to keep, to my new computer :3