Dual monitors detected as one

I have 2 monitors connected with VGA. However, ubuntu only detects one monitor, and the same thing shows on both displays.

$ xrandr
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 1280 x 1024, current 1280 x 1024, maximum 1280 x 1024
default connected primary 1280x1024+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1280x1024 77.00* 

How can I get these 2 monitors to act as 2 separate monitors?

1 Answer

First of all, make sure that you have connected your screens to the correct ports. For example, if you have a graphic card, make sure that your screen is connected to the graphic card. If this fails then, you this problem might be drivers related:

If you haven't done so already, you need to install additional driver, open on :

System Settings > Additional Drivers.

If this doesn't help then try:

sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

And restart:

reboot

Then Open Settings > Displays > Detect Displays then also unchecked the checkbox labelled Mirror Displays.

Lastly you can try to reinstall the latest nvidia drivers:

Run sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-364

I hope that helps :)