Laptop with external monitor - slow response

[Pacific Blue IT]

The Laptop runs fine every time, been sitting in the cupboard un-used for a couple of years, hooked it up to clients main screen ( replacing tower with Laptop) External screen response was extremely slow to any kind of interaction and the mouse will slowly jump from place to place, no smooth movements. Yet this only happens every second time she uses the machine it works great the other times. I have tried both DVI and VGA connections with no improvement. - I'm thinking either a possible heating issue, dying GPU chipset or GPU not powerful enough, whatever it is the signal between the Laptop and monitor just isn't right. Any of you guys had anything similar?

 

[Kitten Kong]

Does it do the same thing each time when your not using the external monitor?.

Have you tried alternative vga/dvi cables?

Make and model of the laptop may also help to.

 

[Markverhyden]

Additional questions.

1. Dual screen, laptop and monitor, or monitor only?
2. Make and size of the monitor?
3. What happens in safe mode?
4. What happens using a Linux distro?

 

[nlinecomputers]

Hard drive. Are we certain that its in working order and your not assuming this is a GPU problem when it really is a HDD one?

 

[nlinecomputers]

And of course my usual mantra, "Event logs, event logs, have you checked the event logs?"

 

[Mainstay]

So I had a batch of this same situation in an office: visual issues on external monitor(s) and slowed down system performance. Nice Dell business laptops that had poor video output when connected to a dual screen.

Driver updates didn't make a difference, cabling wasn't an issue, heat was not the problem, everything else checked fine.

What I did was put in place a USB docking station from Targus. Instant fix.

Monitor output looked great and the users loved that they had a single point of connect / disconnect. Also, they suddenly had more USB ports and better cooling....

We ended up giving almost everyone in the office one of these guys.

 

[Pacific Blue IT]

So I had a batch of this same situation in an office: visual issues on external monitor(s) and slowed down system performance. Nice Dell business laptops that had poor video output when connected to a dual screen.


Driver updates didn't make a difference, cabling wasn't an issue, heat was not the problem, everything else checked fine.

What I did was put in place a USB docking station from Targus. Instant fix.

Monitor output looked great and the users loved that they had a single point of connect / disconnect. Also, they suddenly had more USB ports and better cooling....

We ended up giving almost everyone in the office one of these guys.

Great solution thanks Mainstay I'll give that a go.
Also a thanks to everyone elses inputs. I'll be trying those ideas too but I think Mainstays solution should hopefully fix this.