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I have just added a fourth monitor (I have one laptop and two external monitors already) to my work laptop and it knocks out another one in that it sends one of my original monitors to sleep and it is no longer detected.

If I remove everything and reconnect them individually, every monitor is detected and works correctly.

When I link them up in sequence (one after the other), the first two monitors that I connect are detected and work together, but when I connect the third monitor, it still knocks out one of my original ones regardless of the order.

As this is my work computer, I am restricted in terms of what I can do (i.e. I can't access the Device Manager, etc.) so am wondering what I might be able to do in order to remedy this given this restriction.

It is worth noting that I had the same issue when I added the second external monitor to my current setup; I have no idea what I did, nor how I did it, but the next day it just worked.

I have tried restarting with all devices attached and still get the same result and have also used the Intel Graphics Command Centre to see if there are any additional options that Windows doesn't have, but despite changing resolutions across the other monitors (in the hope that it would work), I am still left with the same result.

It is also worth noting that I am aware of other questions which are similar to this in the respect that external monitors aren't recognised / are going to sleep, but they don't relate to quite the same problem(s) that I am experiencing, hence me posing this question as a separate one.

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  • 'wmic cpu list brief' should show you which i5 CPU you have.
    – Hennes
    May 17, 2021 at 10:36

1 Answer 1

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Most likely it's a hardware limitation. To my knowledge no Intel integrated GPU supports more than 3 displays (some are limited to 2). Even if you have a dedicated GPU (NVIDIA/AMD), the displays are most likely connected to iGPU.

The symptom of this problem is that displays over the limit are detected and recognized, but you can't enable them unless you disable another one.

You can try to work around this with USB video adapters, although they may be heavy on the CPU sometimes.

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  • The fourth display (third external display) isn't detected when I already have two others connected; the display simply enters sleep mode and doesn't show up under any settings unless/until one of the others is disconnected.
    – SnookerFan
    May 16, 2021 at 21:39
  • @SnookerFan What's your CPU?
    – gronostaj
    May 17, 2021 at 4:50
  • Intel i5 (I forget the specifics of it).
    – SnookerFan
    May 17, 2021 at 5:31
  • @SnookerFan There are literally over a hundred different mobile i5 processors, released over 11 years.
    – gronostaj
    May 17, 2021 at 6:15
  • I'm sure - I just didn't have access to my machine at the time; having checked, it's a 10th generation. I can provide specifics later if you like.
    – SnookerFan
    May 17, 2021 at 11:29

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