How to set up a dual monitor setup

Alright, here’s the situation: I’ve got my main 24-inch monitor hooked up to the DVI port on my graphics card, and everything is running fine. Now, I’m trying to get a second, smaller 17-inch monitor up and running as well—both plugged into the same tower.
The problem is, my graphics card only has one single DVI output. The only other available connection I have is on the motherboard itself, but that’s just a VGA port, and when I tried connecting the second monitor through that, absolutely nothing happened. It’s just dead.
I'm currently running Windows 7.
My GPU is an NVIDIA GeForce HD 4890.

Which motherboard are we looking at here?
By the way, how is it that you've only got one output on that card? Usually, those 4890s came equipped with two DVI ports 🤷

@Casey Long2
My motherboard is an Asus P5QPL-VM EPU
. I also noticed that these boards were supposed to come equipped with two DVI outputs, but mine is missing one.
I went ahead and snapped a few photos; hopefully, this helps clarify things:

Graphics card:
http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/9281/26092010565.jpg
I have my current monitor plugged in via the DVI port here:

Motherboard:
http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/8/26092010567.jpg

Hmm, am I seeing things correctly, or are you actually working with an HDMI port here? It might be worth double-checking which specific slot we're dealing with—is it HDMI or a DisplayPort? If it's the latter, finding a DVI adapter should be a total breeze. 🙂

If I had an HDMI port, I'd be set. Actually, I've already got a cable that runs from HDMI straight into a DVI output here.
http://www.smelectronics.com/images2/S-HDMI-DVI-1.jpg

I also have this AVG adapter that converts to DVI.
http://www.jbtech.com/shop/images/at...-f%20dvi-m.jpg

At that point, you'll be able to plug in a second monitor to that HDMI cable without any issues at all.🙂

I got it plugged in, but honestly, there’s still absolutely nothing on the screen :/

Okay, I finally figured it out—it's working now.
@Casey Long2 thanks so much 😉

Hey everyone... I really didn't want to clutter things up by starting a whole new thread, so I was hoping I could just grab some help right here instead.😕

So, here's the deal: I've been rocking this Dell Inspiron that's running an NVIDIA GeForce chip, and it only has one single VGA output. I recently picked up this budget LCD TV/DVD combo set that has a VGA input, and when I hook it up to my laptop, everything looks fine—the picture works, I can tweak the resolution, and I can even center the image using the TV's built-in menu. But there's a huge catch: I can't get it to act as my primary monitor. It keeps defaulting to extended desktop mode, which totally defeats the purpose of why I bought it in the first place. I tried messing with the settings during the Windows XP boot process and selecting Enable VGA mode, which actually gets me the setup I wanted, but then I hit another wall. Every time I try to watch a movie, the video window just stays blank in the player—I've tried both Windows Media Player 11 and BS Player, and it's the exact same headache every single time. 🤷😕 😠...Seriously though, does anyone have any ideas? Any help would be amazing.

Look into a little utility called UltraMon 🙂

stormywolf39 said:Look into a little utility called UltraMon 🙂

I really appreciate the help, man, but I’m still stuck in the exact same spot because, honestly, the option to set my second monitor as the primary one is totally greyed out, and on my first monitor, both settings are just completely unresponsive...

maybe if I send over some screenshots, it'll be a bit easier to show you what's actually going on with my setup
http://img14.imageshack.us/i/newpicture1oz.png/

http://img121.imageshack.us/i/newpictureev.png/