For the last five years or so I’ve been using a Dell Zino HD as my media center PC. It’s worked pretty well, but lately, the computer sometimes “forgets” that it has an HDMI port. The TV just goes blank, and there’s nothing I can do anymore. I found out that the computer still works, it’s just displaying on the VGA output instead.
My solution in the past had been to hook up a VGA monitor, use that to click on “detect displays”, which usually makes the Zino remember its HDMI port again.
Now that I’ve moved, though, there’s no good place to hide the VGA monitor anymore, and I don’t want to have it just sit on the floor, below the TV. And I actually can’t use the VGA connection. Well, I could, but if I do that, then my TV isn’t connected to the computer using HDMI, and then Windows won’t detect the HDMI port either. So I thought maybe I can solve the problem with a remote desktop connection.
Unfortunately, when I use Remote Desktop, detecting displays isn’t allowed. But I’ve found that using a remote desktop connection to open the Device Manager, looking at the Monitors, and clicking “scan for hardware changes” is usually enough.
