If you have one or more external monitors connected to your Surface Dock and you have
- no image on one or more (all) external monitors,
- no image on your Surface,
then the Surface hasn’t fully detected all of the external monitors on its own and needs your help.
- First, unplug the dock from your Surface, wait about 5 seconds, then plug it back in. Wait. Do the displays return to normal now?
- If that doesn't work, make sure the dock is plugged in. Verify this by looking at the connector plugged into the Surface. There will be a white light that is on if the dock is plugged in. No white light? Check the power cords and your power source.
- Still no images? Unplug the power from the BACK of the dock, wait 5 seconds, then plug it back in. Wait a moment.
To power cycle the dock unplug the power cable that runs to the power source from the back of the dock, wait a couple of seconds, and then plug it back in.
If you're still having problems and you can see your desktop on at least one screen or monitor, proceed to the next steps
- Right-click over your desktop…anywhere is fine. A menu will appear, select Display settings
- You’ll see a representation of your Surface screen and one or more external monitors that are attached to your docking station or directly to the Surface. Each box represents a monitor
- If you have one or two external monitors and only see your desktop on one monitor and your Surface (one monitor is blank) or you just see your desktop on the Surface, then the Surface hasn’t fully detected all of the external monitor(s) on it’s own and needs your help. When you look at the Display screen, you will most likely see that one of the boxes is grayed out, like this. That means Windows can see that there is a monitor there, but hasn’t automatically activated it. You need to do this manually.
- Click the box with the grayed out number and scroll down a little on the Display screen and you’ll see that the Scale and layout section settings are grayed out and Multiple display shows Disconnect this display
- To activate, or Extend, your display to the new monitor, select the Multiple displays field and choose Extend desktop to this display.
- Your monitors will most likely go blank and flicker for several seconds, but eventually, you should see your Windows desktop appear on the formerly blank monitor(s). You’ll also see a message asking if you want to Keep these display settings? If everything looks OK, click Keep changes. If something doesn’t look right, click Revert or let the countdown timer expire and the system will revert back to the settings before you made changes. If you look at the Display screen, you’ll now see that the Scale and layout fields are no longer grayed out.
- If you have two external monitors and one is still blank, you'll need to perform this procedure for the other monitor. Once you can see your desktop on your Surface and ALL external monitors, make sure that the orientation is set correctly so your mouse moves correctly between them. If not, click here Mouse does not move correctly between my Surface and external monitors.
*If you have followed all the above steps and it has not resolved your issue, it is probably time to do a hard reset on your Surface. You can find the instructions on how to do a hard reset in the link below. Once you have reset your Surface please come back to this article to set up your monitors again.
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