Can I use it as a primary display card?

My wife’s notebook one day got a blank screen. I tried plugging an external monitor and it also got “no signal input”. I can hear the windows booting/login sounds on the speakers, so I know the system is running. Pressing the “usual key combinations” to switch screens didn’t do the trick. I supposed that it’s an issue with the internal graphics card, so I bought the external USB Display Adapter hoping it would be fully plug-n-play (including boot-time BIOS screens), but screen still was blank (led didn’t switch on too). I could hear windows “usb plugin” sounds detecting something. I transfered the adapter to my desktop computer, and, after booting windows, I had to enter device manager, click USB-DVI device and request “Install Drivers”. It installed beautifully with no further interaction, and worked with a second screen. I even switched it to be the “sole” screen of my desktop for testing. It is good.
Questions are:

  1. Do I need a working graphic adapter to use the USB adapter? (I was hoping it would function standalone as primary display card of my wife’s faulty notebook)
  2. If it can be the primary card indeed, do you have any advice how can I install it on Windows, since I can’t see anything on screen before it is working? (funny eh?)

Hi Vitor,

Thanks for posting your question here! You do need to have a working GPU before you can use a USB Graphics Adapter. It cannot be used on a system where the GPU is not working. Sorry about that!

If you ever need any help or information regarding any of our products, please do feel free to shoot us an email at support@plugable.com. We are here to help!

Regards,
Roze