Second & Third Monitor working fine in office until we present in conference room

Question

When using my laptop (Dell) in the office with 2x extra monitors it works fine, I have to do some presentations in a conference room, as soon as I return to my office and plug into my docking station my second and third monitor shows on my display settings but stays black. Why is this happening and how to fix? I am using HDMI cables for both screens and everything works through my docking station.

Answer 1

new contributor here too.

My first thought is perhaps you are using monitors that are possibly TVs and they are going to sleep at some point while you are away and the HDMI connections you are using aren't telling them to come out of standby when you reconnect. When you disconnect your laptop from your docking station, do you do anything different when you go home for the day than when you disconnect for a presentation? It's possible that you are shutting your laptop completely down when you leave for the day and when you come in in the morning you do a fresh boot and the TVs get their signal during that time.

If they have always done this, then m aybe you are stuck with the issue but I would say:

1. Check the monitors check and make sure if they have multiple HDMI inputs make sure you are on a CEC connection, it's a input that can sense connections.
2. Check the TV settings ( if they never worked there might be some magic in there )
3. How do you connect to the presentation TVs, no docking station there I'm sure so is there just an HDMI cable strung for you, or connecting wirelessly?
4. Have you ever tried shutting down your laptop completely after the presentation, and booting it up just like when you come in for work and see if that get's them to work?

I have a million other questions. I would say explain a little more about each setup you going on and maybe even their makes and models, TVs are pretty easy to find, then documation could give us some clues.

I'm tired...me..go..bed..now.....